Systems and methods for resuming a media asset

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods address shortcomings in conventional systems by resuming a media asset from a logical point. In some aspects, the systems and methods receive a first input at a first time from a user to pause a media asset at a first position and a second input at a second time from the user to resume the media asset. The systems and methods further determine whether a time period between the first and the second time exceeds a threshold time period. In response to determining that the time period does not exceed the threshold time period, the systems and methods generate the media asset for display beginning at the first position. However, in response to determining that the time period exceeds the threshold, the systems and methods generate the media asset for display beginning at a second position preceding the first position.

BACKGROUND

Conventional media systems can pause and resume programs. In some cases,conventional media systems can also create bookmarks on multimediapresentations and save these bookmarks for later access. For example, auser watching a television show can bookmark his current viewingprogress of an on-demand program if he or she has to attend to somethingurgent, and return to it at a later time. However, the pause or bookmarkmay occur in the middle of a scene or a sentence. This may causeconfusion for the user when he returns to the program some time later.The user might not instantly remember where he left off in the program.In such conventional media systems, the user must either try to recallthe plot as the program continues or manually rewind the program to aprevious scene that he does remember.

SUMMARY

Systems and methods are described to address shortcomings inconventional media systems by resuming a paused media asset from alogical point. A logical point in a paused media asset is a position(usually different from the paused position) that helps the user viewingthe media asset to recall the context of the media asset after he or sheresumes it sometime later. The logical point may be different dependingon the context of the media asset and the user. In some embodiments,once the user has paused the media asset, a media guidance applicationautomatically analyzes the paused position (or “pause point”) of themedia asset to determine if it is in the middle of a sentence. In someembodiments, the determination may be based on metadata associated withthe media asset that outlines the time stamps for each and everysentence in the media asset. In some other embodiments, the mediaguidance application may rely on speech recognition and/or naturallanguage processing (NLP) rules to determine whether the user paused inthe middle of a sentence. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may use a combination of metadata and NLP rules to make thisdetermination.

In some embodiments, if the media guidance application has determinedthat the paused position of the media asset is in the middle of asentence, the media guidance application may determine a position withinthe media asset that corresponds to the start of the paused sentence.This determination may be based on the metadata associated with themedia asset, speech recognition using NLP rules, or a combination of thetwo. Once the media guidance application has determined where the startof the sentence is, it may receive a subsequent user instruction toresume the media asset. Instead of resuming the media asset from whereit was paused, the media guidance application may automatically resumefrom the start of the sentence, thereby allowing the user to recall moreeasily what he was watching by having a buffer period for him to adjust.

In some embodiments, in addition to determining if the media asset ispaused in the middle of a sentence, the media guidance application maydetermine whether the media asset is paused in the middle of a plotline, a scene, or a particular character or speaker's unfinished line.In some embodiments, the media guidance application may implement aplayback hierarchy to make this determination. For example, the playbackhierarchy may contain time stamps for every plot line, scene change,character movements, speaker lines, and sentences in the media asset. Ofcourse, the playback hierarchy could also include a subset of theabove-listed information, or any other playback information associatedwith the media asset. In some embodiments, this playback hierarchy maybe included in the metadata of the media asset, such that the mediaguidance application receives the playback hierarchy along with themetadata from a remote server.

With the playback hierarchy, the media guidance application may resumethe media asset after receiving a user input to do so, by generating themedia asset for display from the beginning of the cut-off scene, thebeginning of the cut-off line of a particular speaker, the most recentchange of speaker, and so on. For example, the media guidanceapplication may determine that Linda, a speaker in the on-demandprogram, is completing her last sentence in a debate with James, anotherspeaker in the on-demand program when it receives an input from the userto pause the on-demand program. Upon receiving a further user input toresume the paused on-demand program, the media guidance application mayresume from the beginning of Linda's cut-off sentence, the beginning ofthe very first sentence that Linda speaks in this debate scene, thebeginning of the debate scene, or any of a number of different startingpoints, in order to give the user a reminder of the on-demand program'scontext and resume from a logical point for the user.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine whatthe logical starting point for the user under his or her currentsituation is by keeping track of how long the user has been away for.For example, if the user has only been away for a few seconds, the mediaguidance application may simply resume from the same point as the pausedposition of the media asset, because the user may still have a vividmemory of where he paused the media asset. If, in another example, themedia guidance application determines that the user has been away for afew hours, the media guidance application may resume the media assetfrom further back, such as from the beginning of the current speaker'slines. In a further example, if the media guidance applicationdetermines that the user has been away for days, the media guidanceapplication may resume the media asset from the beginning of the scene,or even from the beginning of the media asset itself, to give the usermore information to recall.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may allow the userto customize how far back to resume a media asset as a function of hislength of absence. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive user selection to resume the media asset from the same point asthe paused position if the user has been away for less than two minutes,and resume the media asset from the start of the scene if he has beenaway for two hours or more. In some embodiments, the user customizationof how far back to resume need not be configured as a function of hisabsence and can, instead, be an absolute time period. For example, themedia guidance application may receive user input to configure hissettings on these issues. According to the user's settings, the mediaguidance application may resume the media asset from a position that is30 seconds before the paused position if he has been away for less thanan hour, and resume from a point that is 5 minutes before the pausedposition if he has been away for longer than half a day. In someembodiments, the media guidance application may perform a temporal“snap-in” when resuming the media asset from a fixed time period beforethe paused position in order to avoid starting from the middle of asentence. For example, if the media guidance application resumed apaused on-demand program from a point in time that is 5 minutes beforethe paused position, based on the user's settings, and the point happensto cut into the middle of a sentence (or the middle of a particularcharacter's line, etc.), the media guidance application may go back alittle further to the beginning of the sentence (or the beginning of theline, etc.) to produce a logical starting point, despite the user'sconfiguration of 5 minutes.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive theuser's input to pause the media asset from a first device and receivethe user's input to resume the media asset from a second device. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine that a user haswatched the on-demand program for 30 minutes on a television beforepausing it and, subsequently, turned to his cell phone to resumewatching the same on-demand program there. In some embodiments, themedia guidance application may perform the same methods as describedabove, by resuming the media asset for the user, on the second device,from a position before the paused position on the first device dependingon how long the user has been away for. In some other embodiments, themedia guidance application running on the first device may receive theuser input to resume the media asset, whereby the user input mayspecifically demand resuming the media asset from the second device. Forexample, the media guidance application running on the television mayreceive user input to pause the on-demand program, and later on receiveanother user input to resume the on-demand program on the user'sconnected cell phone. Responsive to the user input on the television,the media guidance application running on the user's cell phone mayautomatically begin playing the on-demand program from a logicalposition, as defined in the various embodiments in the presentdisclosure.

In some embodiments, after receiving the user's input to pause a mediaasset, the media guidance application may monitor the user's subsequentviewing of the same media asset to determine how far back to resume. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine that the userfirst began watching the on-demand program on a television and pausedafter 30 minutes, resumed the on-demand program a few hours later on acell phone and paused again after 20 minutes, and finally resumed theon-demand program two days later on the television again. In thisexample, the media guidance application may take into account the user'sviewing of the on-demand program on the cell phone in calculating howfar back to resume the on-demand program on the television. The timeperiod that the user has been away for since the last time he accessedthe on-demand program (i.e., from the cell phone) will be used todetermine how far back to resume the on-demand program on thetelevision. In some other embodiments, the total amount of time that theuser has been away for from the first device may alternatively be usedby the media guidance application to determine how far back to resumethe on-demand program.

In some aspects, the systems and methods described provide for resuminga media asset. A media guidance application may extract metadataassociated with the media asset. The metadata includes a plurality ofpositions in the media asset. For example, the media guidanceapplication may receive an on-demand program on the first presidentialdebate of the year when a user selects the program for display. Themedia guidance application may extract metadata associated with theon-demand program that contains six segments of videos lasting for atotal of 90 minutes. The metadata in this example may include, amongother things, time stamps corresponding to the start time and end timefor each segment, for each candidate's response, and for each sentence.For consistency, we assume that the on-demand program as used in thisexample runs from 00:00:00 to 01:30:00.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive a firstinput from a user to pause the media asset at a first position of theplurality of positions. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive an input from a user to pause the on-demand program halfwaythrough the debate. The paused first position may correspond to01:02:01, a time stamp among a plurality of time stamps. In someembodiments, the plurality of time stamps may be all the time stampsavailable from the metadata associated with the media asset, that is,each and every time stamp within the range of 00:00:00 and 01:30:00.

In some embodiments, based on receiving the first input from the user,the media guidance application may store the first position in abookmark for the media asset, determine that the first position in themedia asset corresponds to a middle of a sentence based on the metadata,determine a second position of the plurality of positions in the mediaasset corresponding to a start of the sentence based on the metadata,and update the bookmark to include the second position. For example,based on receiving the first input from the user to pause the on-demandprogram at 01:02:01, the media guidance application may store the firstposition (e.g., “01:02:01”) in the bookmark. The media guidanceapplication may subsequently determine that the first positioncorresponds to the middle of a sentence based on the metadata, which, asdescribed above, contains the start and end times of each sentence inthe on-demand program. In this particular example, the media guidanceapplication may determine from the metadata that a sentence being spokenby one of the characters runs from 01:01:59 to 01:02:21. Based on themetadata, the media guidance application may determine the start of thepaused sentence is at 01:01:59, and update the bookmark from the firstposition (“01:02:01”) to the second position (“01:01:59”).

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may update thebookmark to include the second position by removing the first positionfrom the bookmark for the media asset, and inserting the second positionin the bookmark. For example, the media guidance application may updatethe bookmark by removing the first position (“01:02:01”) from thebookmark and inserting the second position (“01:01:59”) into thebookmark.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive a secondinput from the user to resume the media asset. Based on receiving thesecond input from the user, the media guidance application may generatethe media asset for display from the bookmark. For example, the mediaguidance application may receive a second input from the user a fewminutes after receiving the first input to pause the program, in orderto resume the on-demand program. Based on receiving the second input,the media guidance application may generate the program for display fromthe bookmarked second position (“01:01:59”) that corresponds to thebeginning of the sentence that was cut off by the pause.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine thatthe first position in the media asset corresponds to the middle of thesentence by determining, based on the metadata, a third position of theplurality of positions in the media asset corresponding to an end of thesentence, and comparing the first position against the second and thethird positions to determine that the first position is before the thirdposition and is after the second position. Continuing from the aboveexamples, the media guidance application may determine that the pausedsentence at the first position (“01:02:01”) has a third positioncorresponding to the end of the sentence (“01:02:21”). The mediaguidance application may compare the first position (“01:02:01”) againstthe second (“01:01:59”) and third (“01:02:21”) positions to determinethat the first position is before the third position and is after thesecond position. Based on this, the media guidance application is ableto determine that the paused position cuts a sentence in the middle.

In some embodiments, the metadata associated with the media asset mayinclude caption text. The media guidance application may determine thatthe first position in the media asset corresponds to the middle of thesentence by analyzing the caption text to determine the sentencecorresponding to the first position, and applying a grammar rule to thesentence corresponding to the first position to determine that thesentence is incomplete. In some embodiments, the metadata associatedwith the on-demand debate program may include on-screen caption and/orsubtitles that are either manually entered or automatically generatedfor the program. In some other embodiments, the metadata may not includeon-screen caption, and the media guidance application may implement aspeech recognition module to automatically convert the audio stream ofthe program into caption text. For example, the media guidanceapplication may analyze the caption text to determine the sentencecorresponding to the first position (“01:02:01”) where the media assetis paused, and apply one or more grammar rules to the sentence todetermine if it is incomplete. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may carry out the grammatical analysis of thespeech-converted caption text independent of the analysis using metadataassociated with the media asset. For example, the media guidanceapplication may parse an audio stream of the media asset into sentencesand apply grammar rules to test whether each and every element of asentence (e.g., subject, verb, and object) are present in the sentences.In this example, the parsing and grammar analysis are performedindependent of the metadata associated with the media asset. In someother embodiments, the grammatical analysis may be carried out tosupplement the metadata analysis. For example, the media guidanceapplication may carry out analysis of the sentence at the first positionusing both the metadata, which includes on-screen caption, and thespeech recognition module, in the event that there is a mismatch betweenthe on-screen caption included in the metadata and the speech-convertedcaption text as derived from the speech recognition module.

In some embodiments, the metadata associated with the media assetfurther includes a field for a current speaker of the media asset and anindication of a start of the current speaker's line. For example, themetadata associated with the on-demand program may include a field for acurrent speaker, such as James, as well as an indication of a start ofthe current speaker's line, such as a starting time stamp for James'line (e.g., “01:00:52”) in a debate scene with Linda. Here, the startingtime stamp for James' line refers to the time stamp corresponding to thebeginning of one of James' continuous lines. In a hypothetical debatebetween James and Linda, which runs from 01:00:52 to 01:33:21. James maybegin with a first sentence from 01:00:52 to 01:01:01 and a secondsentence from 01:01:01 to 01:01:03. Linda may respond with a sentencefrom 01:01:12 to 01:01:51 followed by a sentence from 01:01:59 to01:02:21. In accordance with the embodiments discussed above, if themedia guidance application pauses the debate at 01:02:01 (i.e., in themiddle of Linda's second sentence during the debate), the starting timestamp of Linda's line would be 01:01:12 (i.e., the beginning of herfirst sentence), whereas the start time of Linda's second sentence wouldbe 01:01:59.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive a thirdinput from the user to pause the media asset at a third position, andreceive a fourth input from the user to resume the media asset. Based onreceiving the fourth input from the user to resume the media asset, themedia guidance application may determine the current speaker whose lineis paused at the third position, and generate the media asset fordisplay at the start of the current speaker's line. For example, themedia guidance application may receive a further input from the user topause the on-demand program at a third position (“01:02:01”), and,subsequently, receive a fourth input from the user to resume theprogram. Based on receiving the fourth input from the user, the mediaguidance application may determine that Linda is the speaker who iscurrently reciting a line when the input to pause is received, andresume the program from the start of Linda's lines (“01:01:12”).

In some embodiments, the metadata associated with the media assetincludes a field for playback information of a recent scene. Forexample, the metadata associated with the on-demand program may includeplayback information, such as start and stop time stamps, for the debatescene. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive athird input from the user to pause the media asset, and receive a fourthinput form the user to resume the media asset. In response to receivingthe fourth input from the user to resume the media asset, the mediaguidance application may analyze the playback information of the recentscene to determine a start of the recent scene, and generate the mediaasset for display at the start of the recent scene. For example, themedia guidance application may analyze the playback information of thedebate scene to determine its starting time stamp. The starting timestamp of the debate scene may be 01:00:52, when James first started thedebate with Linda. Based on receiving the fourth input from the user toresume the media asset, the media guidance application may generate theon-demand program for display beginning at the starting time stamp ofthe debate scene.

In some embodiments, the start of the recent scene corresponds to astart of a recent chapter, a start of a recent episode, or a start ofthe media asset. For example, the term “recent scene” may be broadlydefined to include not just a theatrical scene, but may refer to a sceneof a movie, a chapter of a program or movie, an episode of a programseries, or a media asset itself. Consequently, the start of the recentscene may refer to the starting time stamp of a scene, a chapter, anepisode, or a media asset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine a timeperiod between receiving the third input to pause the media asset andreceiving the fourth input to resume the media asset, and compare thetime period against a threshold time period. In response to determiningthat the time period is greater than the threshold time period, themedia guidance application may generate the media asset for display atthe start of the recent scene. In response to determining that the timeperiod is not greater than the threshold, however, the media guidanceapplication may generate the media asset for display from the firstposition. For example, the media guidance application may keep track ofthe amount of time that the user has paused the on-demand program bydetermining a time period between receiving an input to pause theprogram and receiving another input to resume the program. The mediaguidance application may then compare the time period against athreshold time period to determine whether the time period exceeds thethreshold time period. If the media guidance application determines thatthe threshold time period is exceeded, the media guidance applicationmay resume the on-demand program beginning from the start of the recentscene (“01:00:52” of the debate scene), as discussed in the precedingexample. If, however, the threshold time period is not exceeded, themedia guidance application may resume the on-demand program beginningfrom the same position where it is paused (the paused position at“01:02:01”).

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may generate fordisplay to the user a plurality of options, wherein each option of theplurality of options corresponds to a threshold time period. Forexample, the media guidance application may let the user decide how toconfigure the threshold time period, and display a number of optionseach corresponding to a potential threshold time period for the user toselect. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receivea user selection of an option from the plurality of options, wherein theselected option designates a corresponding threshold time period thatthe user is allowed to be absent for without resuming the media assetfrom an earlier position. For example, the media guidance applicationmay notify the user at a settings page that a selection of a particulartime period as a threshold time period would cause the system to resumea paused on-demand program from an earlier position if the user haspaused the program for longer than the threshold time period. The mediaguidance application may receive further user input in the settings pageto configure other behaviors related to the pause-resume features.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive thefirst input from the user with a media device and may receive the secondinput from the user to resume the media asset with a different mediadevice than the media device used to receive the first input. Forexample, the media guidance application may be implemented on twodifferent media devices: a television and a cell phone. The mediaguidance application implemented on the television may receive the firstuser input to pause the on-demand program, e.g., at the end of James'lines in the above-described debate scene. Thereafter, the mediaguidance application implemented on the cell phone may receive thesecond user input to resume the on-demand program. Here, the featuresand embodiments as described above are equally applicable. For example,the media guidance application may receive the user input to pause theon-demand program at 01:02:01, in the middle of Linda's second sentencein the debate scene, at the television. Subsequently, the media guidanceapplication may resume the program at 01:01:59 (i.e., at the start ofthe sentence), at 01:01:12 (i.e., at the start of Linda's line), or at01:00:52 (i.e., at the start of the debate scene) from the cell phone inresponse to receiving the user's input to resume the program from there.

In some aspects, the systems and methods described provide for resuminga media asset. In some embodiments, a media guidance application mayreceive, at a first time, a first input from a user to pause a mediaasset at a first position. For example, the media guidance applicationmay receive a first input to pause a recorded program at position01:02:01, at 7:00 AM. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may receive, at second time, a second input from the user toresume the media asset. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive a second input to resume the recorded program at 8:00 AM. Insome embodiments, the media guidance application may determine whether atime period between the first time and the second time is greater than athreshold time period. For example, the media guidance application maydetermine the time period between 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM, i.e., one hour,is greater than a threshold time period (e.g., 30 minutes).

In some embodiments, in response to determining that the time period isgreater than the threshold time period, the media guidance applicationmay receive metadata from a database, wherein the metadata comprises aplurality of time stamps, each time stamp of the plurality of timestamps corresponding to a starting time of a plurality of scenes of themedia asset, store the plurality of time stamps and the plurality ofscenes as a playback hierarchy, determine a start of a recent scene ofthe media asset from the playback hierarchy based on the first position,set the start of the recent scene as a second position of the mediaasset, and generate the media asset for display beginning at the secondposition preceding the first position. Continuing with the example abovefrom this aspect of the disclosure, the media guidance application may,in response to determining that the one-hour time period is greater thanthe threshold time period of 30 minutes, receive metadata associatedwith the recorded program from a remote media content database, themetadata comprising time stamps corresponding to scenes within therecorded program. The media guidance application may store the timestamps and the scenes of the recorded program as a playback hierarchyfor the program. Based on the first position where the recorded programis paused (“01:02:01”), the media guidance application may determine astart of the debate scene (i.e., “01:00:52”) and set the start of thedebate scene as the second position to resume the recorded program from.

In some embodiments, in response to determining that the time period isnot greater than the threshold time period, the media guidanceapplication may generate the media asset for display beginning at thefirst position. For example, if the time period that the user is awayfor is not greater than the threshold time period of 30 minutes, themedia guidance application may resume the recorded program from thefirst position, i.e., 01:02:01, where it is paused.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may generate fordisplay to the user a plurality of options, wherein each option of theplurality of options corresponds to a threshold time period. Forexample, the media guidance application may generate a plurality ofthreshold time periods as selectable options to the user, such as “5minutes”, “15 minutes”, “30 minutes”, “one day” etc. In someembodiments, the media guidance application may receive a user selectionof an option from the plurality of options, wherein the selected optiondesignates a corresponding threshold time period that the user isallowed to be absent for without resuming the media asset from anearlier position. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive a selection of “30 minutes” from the user, which designates thatthe user allowed to be absent for 30 minutes without the media guidanceapplication automatically resuming the program from an earlier positionwhen the user selects to resume it. In other words, the user's selectionof “30 minutes” as the threshold time period would cause the mediaguidance application to resume the program from an earlier position(e.g., start of scene, start of line, etc.) when the user has paused theprogram for longer than the threshold time period.

In some embodiments, the metadata comprises data on a plurality ofcommercial breaks associated with the media asset. In some embodiments,the plurality of time stamps corresponds to end times of the pluralityof commercial breaks. For example, in some on-demand programs, themetadata associated with a program includes information on commercialbreak data, which may be used as a proxy for scene or chapter hierarchyof the program. The time stamps of the plurality of positions in theplayback hierarchy may correspond to the end times of the commercialbreaks.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may set the start ofthe recent scene as the second position of the media asset bydetermining from the playback hierarchy a first time stamp associatedwith the start of the recent scene, determine from the playbackhierarchy a second time stamp associated with an end of the recentscene, compare the first position against the first and second timestamps, and, in response to determining that the first position isbefore the second time stamp and is after the first time stamp,assigning the first time stamp to the second position. For example, themedia guidance application may set the starting time of the recentdebate scene between Linda and James (i.e., “01:00:52”) as a first timestamp and the end time of the debate scene (i.e., “01:33:21”) as asecond time stamp. In response to determining that the first position(i.e., “01:02:01”, where the program is paused) is before the secondtime stamp and temporally after the first time stamp, the media guidanceapplication may assign the first time stamp, i.e., “01:00:52”corresponding to the start of the debate scene, to the second positionto be added to the bookmark.

In some embodiments, the start of the recent scene corresponds to astart of a recent sentence, a start of a recent chapter, a start of arecent episode, or a start of the media asset. For example, the term“recent scene” may be broadly defined to include not just a theatricalscene, but may refer to a sentence of a media asset, a scene of a movie,a chapter of a program or movie, an episode of a program series, or themedia asset itself. Consequently, the start of the recent scene mayrefer to the starting time stamp of a sentence, a scene, a chapter, anepisode, or a media asset.

In some embodiments, the first input from the user is received at themedia device, and wherein the media asset is resumed at another mediadevice. For example, as discussed before, the media guidance applicationmay be implemented on two or more media devices, such that the pause andresume actions may be received by the media guidance application(s)implemented on different devices.

In some embodiments, the metadata associated with the media assetincludes a field for a current speaker of the media asset and anindication of a start of the current speaker's line. In someembodiments, the media guidance application may receive a third inputfrom the user to pause the media asset and receive a fourth input fromthe user to resume the media asset. Based on receiving the fourth inputfrom the user to resume the media asset, the media guidance applicationmay determine the current speaker whose line is paused at the firstposition, and generate the media asset for display at the start of thecurrent speaker's line. For example, the metadata associated with theon-demand program may include a field for a current speaker, such asJames, as well as an indication of a start of the current speaker'sline, such as a starting time stamp for James' line (e.g., “01:00:52”)in a debate scene with Linda. Here, the starting time stamp for James'line refers to the time stamp corresponding to the beginning of one ofJames' continuous lines. In the hypothetical debate between James andLinda, which runs from 01:00:52 to 01:33:21, James may begin with afirst sentence from 01:00:52 to 01:01:01 and a second sentence from01:01:01 to 01:01:03. Linda may respond with a sentence from 01:01:12 to01:01:51 followed by a sentence from 01:01:59 to 01:02:21. In accordancewith the embodiments discussed herein, if the media guidance applicationpauses the debate at 01:02:01 (i.e., in the middle of Linda's secondsentence during the debate), the media guidance application may resumethe debate scene for the user, based on receiving the user's input, fromthe start of Linda's line at 01:01:12.

In some embodiments, the above-used threshold time period is a firstthreshold time period, and the metadata comprises a plurality ofadditional time stamps corresponding to starting times of a plurality ofsentences of the media asset. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may further determine whether the time period between thefirst time and the second time is not greater than the first thresholdtime period and is greater than a second threshold time period. Inresponse to determining that the time period is not greater than thefirst threshold time period and is greater than the second thresholdtime period, the media guidance application may analyze the metadata todetermine that the first position is in-between a start and an end of arecent sentence, and generate the media asset for display at the startof the recent sentence. For example, in addition to the originalthreshold time period of “30 minutes” configured by the user, the mediaguidance application may receive a further input from the user toconfigure a second threshold time period of “5 minutes.” Based on thesetwo thresholds, the media guidance application may determine that thetime period between the user instruction to pause the program and theuser instruction to resume the program (e.g., 12 minutes) is greaterthan the second threshold (i.e., “5 minutes”) but is not greater thanthe first threshold (i.e., “30 minutes”). In response to thisdetermination, the media guidance application may further determine thatthe paused position (at “01:02:01”) is in the middle of a sentence, andresume the on-demand program for the user from the start of the sentence(i.e., “01:01:59”) rather than from the start of the scene (i.e.,“01:00:52”).

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may analyze themetadata to determine that the first position is in-between the startand the end of the recent sentence by updating the playback hierarchywith the plurality of additional time stamps and the plurality ofsentences, determining the start of the recent sentence of the mediaasset from the playback hierarchy based on the first position, settingthe start of the recent sentence as a third position of the media asset,and generating the media asset for display beginning at the thirdposition preceding the first position. For example, in order todetermine that the paused first position is in-between the start and endof a recent sentence, the media guidance application may update theplayback hierarchy with a plurality of time stamps corresponding to aplurality of sentences in the on-demand program, such that the playbackhierarchy for the program contains not only scene-level andcharacter-level time stamps, but also sentence-level time stamps. Oncethe media guidance application determines that the first position(“01:02:01”) is in-between the start (“01:01:59”) and end (“01:02:21”)of Linda's second sentence in the debate scene, the media guidanceapplication may set the time stamp for the start of the sentence as thethird position of the program and resume the program from the thirdposition (“01:01:59”) preceding the first position (“01:02:01”).

It should be noted that the systems, methods, apparatuses, and/oraspects described above may be applied to, or used in accordance with,other systems, methods, apparatuses, and/or aspects described in thisdisclosure.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The above and other objects and advantages of the disclosure will beapparent upon consideration of the following detailed description, takenin conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like referencecharacters refer to like parts throughout, and in which:

FIG. 1 shows an illustrative example of a display screen generated by amedia guidance application in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure:

FIG. 2 shows another illustrative embodiment of a display screengenerated by a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure:

FIG. 3 shows an illustrative example of a data structure for metadata asused by a media guidance application in accordance with some embodimentsof the disclosure;

FIG. 4 shows an illustrative example of a playback hierarchy as used bya media guidance application in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 5 shows yet another illustrative example of a display screengenerated by a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 6 shows yet another illustrative example of a display screengenerated by a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of an illustrative user equipment device inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of an illustrative media system in accordancewith some embodiments of the disclosure:

FIG. 9 is a flowchart of an illustrative process for resuming a mediaasset using a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 10 is a flowchart of another illustrative process for resuming amedia asset using a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure; and

FIG. 11 is a flowchart of yet another illustrative process for resuminga media asset using a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Systems and methods are described to address shortcomings inconventional media systems by resuming a media asset from a logicalpoint for the user. The systems and methods may be implemented via amedia guidance application running on a user device (e.g., userequipment device 700 (FIG. 7 )), a remote server (e.g., media contentsource 816 or media guidance data source 818 (FIG. 8 )), or anothersuitable device.

FIG. 1 shows an illustrative example of a display screen generated by amedia guidance application in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure. On display screen 100 of FIG. 1 , the media guidanceapplication may receive a video stream and generate it for display asvideo frame 110 on a display device, such as display 712 of FIG. 7 . Themedia guidance application may also receive metadata associated with thevideo stream and display it as information panel 120 on the displaydevice. Although information panel 120 is shown as a banner overlay ondisplay screen 100, it is understood by one skilled in the art thatother forms of displaying metadata information is contemplated by thisdisclosure, for example, by displaying such metadata as a side bar.Within information panel, the media guidance application may generatefor display an optional media asset identifier 122, as well as aprogress bar 130. Progress bar 130 is marked by time elapsed 132 andtime remaining 134, which indicate the amount of the video that the userhas watched and the remaining amount that the user has yet to watch,respectively. Optionally, the media guidance application may generatefor display a progress indicator 138 on progress bar 130.

In some embodiments, once a user has paused a media asset, the mediaguidance application automatically analyzes the paused position of themedia asset (as indicated by progress indicator 138) to determine if itis in the middle of a sentence. In some embodiments, the determinationmay be based on metadata associated with the media asset that outlinesthe time stamps for each and every sentence in the media asset. Once themedia guidance application compares the paused position, at progressindicator 138, against the time stamps, the media guidance applicationmay determine it is in the middle of a sentence if the paused positionis in-between a starting time stamp and an ending time stamp for asentence. In some other embodiments, the media guidance application mayrely on speech recognition and/or natural language processing (NLP)rules to determine whether the user paused in the middle of a sentence.For example, the media guidance application may perform NLP on the audiostream of the media asset up to the paused position, and determine ifthe sentence corresponding to the paused position (at progress indicator138) is complete. If the sentence is incomplete according to one or moregrammar rules, the media guidance application may determine that thepaused position is in the middle of a sentence. One possible grammarrule for making this determination is to analyze the subject-verb-object(SVO) structure of the sentence and determine if one or more elements ismissing. In still some further embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may use a combination of metadata and NLP rules to make thisdetermination. In still some other embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may determine whether the user paused in the middle of asentence by analyzing the audio stream associated with the media assetand determining if a character is talking. For example, the mediaguidance application may apply a simple speech recognition algorithm todetermine if the on-demand program is outputting a human voice, ascompared to pure background music or silence (e.g., white noise), whenthe user paused the program. In the event that the program is outputtinghuman voice, the media guidance application may determine that the userhas paused in the middle of a sentence for the program.

In some embodiments, once the media guidance application has determinedthat the paused position of the media asset is in the middle of asentence, the media guidance application may determine a position withinthe media asset that corresponds to the start of the paused sentence, asrepresented by position bookmark 136 in display screen 100 of FIG. 1 .In some embodiments, position bookmark 136 is generated for display tothe user on progress bar 130, and may optionally be updated in real timeas the video progresses. For example, as the user progresses through anon-demand program (as represented by progress indicator 138), the mediaguidance application may generate position bookmark 136 for display as ashifting marker that trails progress indicator 138. In some otherembodiments, position bookmark 136 merely represents information that iskept by the media guidance application and is not generated for displayto the user. The time stamp information saved in position bookmark 136may, however, be constantly updated to reflect the start of the mostrecent sentence. In some embodiments, the media guidance application maystore the position of progress indicator 138 within position bookmark136 and refrain from generating progress indicator 138 for display. Insuch embodiments, the media guidance application may constantly updateposition bookmark 136 to include future positions of progress indicator138, or to override the existing position of progress indicator 138 withthe future positions of progress indicator 138.

The determination of the start of the paused sentence may be based onthe metadata associated with the media asset, speech recognition usingNLP rules, or a combination of the two. Once the media guidanceapplication has determined where the start of the sentence is, it mayreceive a subsequent user instruction to resume the media asset. Insteadof resuming the media asset from where it was paused, the media guidanceapplication may automatically resume from the start of the sentence, asindicated by position bookmark 136, thereby allowing the user to recallmore easily what he was watching by having a buffer period to for him toadjust.

FIG. 2 shows another illustrative embodiment of a display screengenerated by a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. On display screen 200 of FIG. 2 , themedia guidance application may generate video frame 210 and informationpanel 220 in a substantially similar manner as video frame 110 andinformation panel 110 of FIG. 1 . Within progress 2 c bar 230, the mediaguidance application may generate a plurality of scene indicators 242,244, 246, and 248, in addition to progress indicator 238 and optionallyposition bookmark 236. The plurality of scene indicators may correspondto starting points of a plurality of scenes, or chapters, such asdifferent topic segments of a Presidential Debate. In an illustrativeexample, the Presidential Debate as shown in video frame 210 may bedivided into six topic segments for a total of 90 minutes. Therefore,the media guidance application may generate the scene indicators at thestart of each scene, e.g., at 00:05:31, 00:29:15, 01:00:52 . . . onprogress bar 230. Exemplary scene structures are shown in scene-leveltime stamp table 410 of FIG. 4 . In some embodiments, the sceneindicators may correspond to ending time stamps of commercial breaks.For example, each segment of video (or scene) of the debate program maystart at the end of a commercial break.

FIG. 3 shows an illustrative example of a data structure for metadata asused by a media guidance application in accordance with some embodimentsof the disclosure. In FIG. 3 , the data structure is presented in amarkup language format similar to XML, but it is understood by a skilledperson in the art that the exact format and data structure used hereinis non-limiting, and merely serves to illustrate the concept ofmetadata. In some embodiments, information panel 120 and 220 may eachincorporate data from the metadata of FIG. 3 . For example, media assetidentifier 122 may be displayed based on data stored at the “name” fieldin the metadata (e.g., the “name” field in row 1). Additional elementssuch as scene indicators 242, 244, 246, and 248 may be based on datastored at the “time” field for each segment of the metadata, such as the“time” fields of rows 6, 12, and 17. In some embodiments, the metadatamay include data associated with the media asset that is not yetgenerated for display on a display screen. For example, the URL datastored at the “social_media” field in row 8 may not be displayedexplicitly in information panel 120, but may be accessible as ahyperlink when the user clicks on information panel 120 when progressindicator 138 indicates that the user is currently watching the firstsegment, in order to provide the user with real-time access to socialnetworks to participate in discussing the issues raised in the mediaasset.

In some embodiments, in addition to determining if the media asset ispaused in the middle of a sentence, the media guidance application maydetermine, instead, whether the media asset is paused in the middle of aplot line, a scene, or a particular character or a speaker's unfinishedline. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may implementa playback hierarchy, such as playback hierarchy 400 of FIG. 4 asincluded in the metadata of FIG. 3 , to make this determination.

FIG. 4 shows an illustrative example of a playback hierarchy as used bya media guidance application in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure. Playback hierarch 400 may include scene-level table 410 andsentence-or-character-level table 420. In some embodiments, the mediaguidance application may further store a copy of timer table 430 withinplayback hierarchy 400, in order to keep track of how long a user haspaused a media asset for and the corresponding playback point to resumethe media asset from based on the settings that the user has previouslyentered. In some other embodiments, the media guidance application maystore timer table 430 in a storage unit, such as storage 708 of FIG. 7 ,independently from tables 410 and 420.

In some embodiments, playback hierarchy 400 contains time stamps forscene-level progress in scene-level table 410. In some otherembodiments, playback hierarchy 400 contains time stamps forsentence-level or character-level progress insentence-or-character-level table 420. For example, the playbackhierarchy may contain time stamps for every plot line, scene change,character movements, speaker lines, and sentences in the media asset. Ofcourse, the playback hierarchy could also include a subset of theabove-listed information, or any other playback information associatedwith the media asset. In some embodiments, playback hierarchy 400 may beincluded in the metadata of the media asset, such that the mediaguidance application receives the playback hierarchy along with themetadata from a remote server, such as media guidance data source 818 ormedia content source 816.

Scene-level table 410 may include a number of rows corresponding to thescenes or chapters of a media asset. Sentence-or-chapter-level table 420may include a number of rows corresponding to the sentences of the mediaasset, as well as the speaker for each sentence. In some embodiments,the sentence-level information and the character (or speaker)-levelinformation may be split into two separate tables. With tables 410 and420, the media guidance application may look up the starting and endtimes of each scene from rows 412, 414, and 416 and the starting and endtimes of each sentence, along with the speaker who recited the sentence,from rows 422, 424, 426, and 428. In some embodiments, the mediaguidance application may maintain a relationship between scene-leveltable 410 and sentence-or-character-level table 420, such as by placingthe tables in a hierarchical fashion, so that the sentences within ascene can be easily looked up. For example, the media guidanceapplication may look up a hypothetical time stamp (“01:02:01”) fromwithin tables 410 and 420, and determine that the hypothetical timestamp happens in row 416, at scene 3. From row 416, the media guidanceapplication may be linked to a lower layer of playback hierarchy 400,where sentence-or-character-level table 420 can be accessed, anddetermines that the hypothetical time stamp (“01:02:01”) furthercorresponds to row 428, at sentence 1034, which is recited by “Linda.”

With playback hierarchy 400, the media guidance application may resumethe media asset after receiving a user input to do so, by generating themedia asset for display from the beginning of the cut-off scene, thebeginning of the cut-off line of a particular speaker, the most recentchange of speaker, and so on. In some embodiments, scene-level table 410indicates the beginning and the end of each scene, whereassentence-or-character-level table 420 may include the beginning and theend of each sentence, as well as information on change of speakers. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine that Linda iscompleting her last sentence in row 428 in a debate with James when itreceives an input from the user to pause the on-demand program. Uponreceiving a further user input to resume the paused on-demand program,the media guidance application may resume from the beginning of Linda'scut-off sentence (e.g., from 01:01:59 as shown in row 428), thebeginning of the very first sentence that Linda speaks in this round ofexchange (e.g., from 01:01:12 as shown in row 426), the beginning of thedebate scene (e.g., from 01:00:52 as shown in row 416), or any of anumber of different starting points, in order to give the user areminder of the on-demand program's context and resume from a logicalpoint for the user.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine what alogical starting point for a particular user's specific circumstances isby keeping track of how long the user has been away for using timertable 430. For each time entry listed under the “Timer” column of timertable 430, the media guidance application may compare against one ormore threshold time periods, such as threshold_1, threshold_2, andthreshold_3 in order to determine a corresponding playback point. If thetime entry does not exceed the first threshold (“Threshold_1”), themedia guidance application may determine that the media asset should beresumed from the pause point, i.e., the position where the media assetis paused. If the time entry exceeds the first threshold but does notexceed the second threshold (“Threshold_2”), the media guidanceapplication may determine that the media asset should be resumed fromthe start of the recent sentence. Subsequent comparisons against thethreshold time periods may cause the media guidance application toresume the media asset from the start of a current speaker's line, thestart of a recent scene, the start of a recent chapter, etc. asdiscussed above.

For example, if the user has only been away for a few seconds, asindicated by row 432, the media guidance application may simply resumefrom the same point as the paused position of the media asset, becausethe user may still have vivid memory of where he left off. The mediaguidance application may make this determination by consulting thethreshold settings previously entered by the user. In this example, theuser has previously entered 10 seconds as threshold_1, which indicatesthat the media guidance application should resume the paused media assetfrom the position where it was paused (i.e., the “pause point”) if theuser has been away for less than threshold_1 amount of time (asreflected by the amount of time that the media asset is paused for). Asanother example, if the media guidance application determines that theuser has been away for 33 seconds, as shown in row 434, the mediaguidance application may determine that the media asset has been pausedfor a time period that exceeds threshold_1 but does not exceedthreshold_2. According to row 434, the media guidance application mayresume the media asset from further back, such as from the beginning ofthe sentence. In a further example, if the media guidance applicationdetermines that the user has been away for an even longer time, such as483 seconds (or over 8 minutes) as shown in row 436, the media guidanceapplication may further compare against threshold_2 and threshold_3, andresume the media asset from the beginning of the current speaker's line.Further examples can be envisioned, whereby if the user has been awayfor hours or days, the media guidance application may compare againstfurther thresholds as previously configured by the user and resume themedia asset from the beginning of a recent scene or even from thebeginning of the media asset itself, in order to provide the user withmore information and ensure a seamless viewing experience.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may allow the userto customize the thresholds to decide how far back to resume a mediaasset as a function of his length of absence. For example, the mediaguidance application may receive user selection to resume the mediaasset from the same point as the paused position if the user has beenaway for less than ten seconds (as indicated by threshold_1 of FIG. 4 ),and resume the media asset from the start of the scene if he has beenaway for two hours or more (threshold_3 of FIG. 4 ). In someembodiments, the user customization of how far back to resume need notbe configured as a function of his absence and can, instead, be anabsolute time period. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive user input to configure his settings on these issues. Accordingto the user's settings, the media guidance application may resume themedia asset from a position that is 30 seconds before the pausedposition if he has been away for less than an hour, and resume from apoint that is 5 minutes before the paused position if he has been awayfor longer than half a day, etc. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may perform a temporal “snap-in” when resuming the mediaasset from a fixed time period before the paused position in order toavoid starting from the middle of a sentence. For example, if the mediaguidance application resumed a paused on-demand program from the pointthat is 5 minutes before the paused position, based on the user'ssettings, and the point happens to cut into the middle of a sentence (orthe middle of a particular character's line, etc.), the media guidanceapplication may go back a little further to the beginning of thesentence (or the beginning of the line, etc.) to produce a logicalstarting point, despite the user's configuration of going back by 5minutes only.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive theuser's input to pause the media asset from a first device, and receivethe user's input to resume the media asset from a second device. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine that a user haswatched the on-demand program for 30 minutes on a television beforepausing it, and, subsequently, turned on his cell phone to resumewatching the same on-demand program. In some embodiments, the mediaguidance application may perform the same methods as described above, byresuming the media asset for the user, on the second device, from aposition before the paused position on the first device depending on howlong the user has been away for.

In some embodiments, after receiving the user's input to pause a mediaasset, the media guidance application may monitor the user's subsequentviewing of the same media asset to determine how far back to resume. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine that the userfirst began watching the on-demand program on a television and pausedafter 30 minutes, resumed the on-demand program a few hours later on acell phone and paused again after 20 minutes, and finally resumed theon-demand program two days later on the television again. In thisexample, the media guidance application may take into account the user'sviewing of the on-demand program on the cell phone in calculating howfar back to resume the on-demand program on the television. The timeperiod that the user has been away for from the last time he accessedwatched the on-demand program (i.e., from the cell phone) will be usedto determine how far back to resume the on-demand program on thetelevision. In some other embodiments, the total amount of time that theuser has been away for from the first device may alternatively be usedby the media guidance application to determine how far back to resumethe on-demand program.

In some embodiments, the illustrative data structure of FIG. 3corresponds to the metadata as transmitted or received in-betweendevices, whereas the illustrative playback hierarchy shows a datastructure for storing and modifying at least a portion of the receivedmetadata. For example, the markup language document of FIG. 3 maycorrespond to a data file containing the metadata associated with thedebate program that is transmitted from a remote server, such as mediaguidance data source 818 of FIG. 8 , to the user equipment. The mediaguidance application implemented on the user equipment may subsequentlyparse the data file into the playback hierarchy of FIG. 4 and store theplayback hierarchy in storage 708 for reference at a later time.

The amount of content available to users in any given content deliverysystem can be substantial. Consequently, many users desire a form ofmedia guidance through an interface that allows users to efficientlynavigate content selections and easily identify content that they maydesire. An application that provides such guidance is referred to hereinas an interactive media guidance application or, sometimes, a mediaguidance application or a guidance application.

As referred to herein, an “interactive media guidance application.” or a“media guidance application” or, sometimes, a “guidance application.” isan application that allows a user to consume and/or navigate to content.In some embodiments, the media guidance application may be provided asan online application (i.e., provided on a website), or as a stand-aloneapplication on a server or a user device. In some embodiments, controlcircuitry installed on various devices and platforms may execute themedia guidance application, as described in more detail below. In someembodiments, the media guidance application and/or any instructions forperforming any of the embodiments discussed herein may be encoded onmachine-readable media. Machine-readable media includes any mediacapable of storing data. The machine-readable media may be transitory,including, but not limited to, propagating electrical or electromagneticsignals, or may be non-transitory, including, but not limited to,volatile and nonvolatile computer memory or storage devices such as ahard disk, floppy disk, USB drive, DVD, CD, media card, register memory,processor caches, Random Access Memory (“RAM”).

Interactive media guidance applications may take various forms dependingon the content for which they provide guidance. One typical type ofmedia guidance application is an interactive television program guide.Interactive television program guides (sometimes referred to aselectronic program guides) are well-known guidance applications that,among other things, allow users to navigate among and locate many typesof content or media assets. Interactive media guidance applications maygenerate graphical user interface screens that enable a user to navigateamong, locate and select content. As referred to herein, the terms“media asset” and “content” should be understood to mean anelectronically consumable user asset, such as television programming, aswell as pay-per-view programs, on-demand programs (as in video-on-demand(VOD) systems). Internet content (e.g., streaming content, downloadablecontent, Webcasts, etc.), video clips, audio, content information,pictures, rotating images, documents, playlists, websites, articles,books, electronic books, blogs, chat sessions, social media,applications, games, and/or any other media or multimedia and/orcombination of the same. Guidance applications also allow users tonavigate among and locate content. As referred to herein, the term“multimedia” should be understood to mean content that utilizes at leasttwo different content forms described above, for example, text, audio,images, video, or interactivity content forms. Content may be recorded,played, displayed or accessed by user equipment devices, but can also bepart of a live performance.

The media guidance application and/or any instructions for performingany of the embodiments discussed herein may be encoded onmachine-readable media. Machine-readable media includes any mediacapable of storing data. The machine-readable media may be transitory,including, but not limited to, propagating electrical or electromagneticsignals, or may be non-transitory, including, but not limited to,volatile and non-volatile computer memory or storage devices such as ahard disk, floppy disk, USB drive, DVD, CD, media cards, registermemory, processor caches, Random Access Memory (“RAM”), etc.

With the advent of the Internet, mobile computing, and high-speedwireless networks, users are accessing media on user equipment deviceson which they traditionally did not. As referred to herein, the phrase“user equipment device,” “user equipment,” “user device,” “electronicdevice,” “electronic equipment,” “media equipment device,” or “mediadevice” should be understood to mean any device for accessing thecontent described above, such as a television, a Smart TV, a set-topbox, an integrated receiver decoder (IRD) for handling satellitetelevision, a digital storage device, a digital media receiver (DMR), adigital media adapter (DMA), a streaming media device, a DVD player, aDVD recorder, a connected DVD, a local media server, a BLU-RAY player, aBLU-RAY recorder, a personal computer (PC), a laptop computer, a tabletcomputer, a WebTV box, a personal computer television (PC/TW), a PCmedia server, a PC media center, a hand-held computer, a stationarytelephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a mobile telephone, aportable video player, a portable music player, a portable gamingmachine, a smart phone, or any other television equipment, computingequipment, or wireless device, and/or combination of the same. In someembodiments, the user equipment device may have a front facing screenand a rear facing screen, multiple front screens, or multiple angledscreens. In some embodiments, the user equipment device may have a frontfacing camera and/or a rear facing camera. On these user equipmentdevices, users may be able to navigate among and locate the same contentavailable through a television. Consequently, media guidance may beavailable on these devices, as well. The guidance provided may be forcontent available only through a television, for content available onlythrough one or more of other types of user equipment devices, or forcontent available both through a television and one or more of the othertypes of user equipment devices. The media guidance applications may beprovided as on-line applications (i.e., provided on a web-site), or asstand-alone applications or clients on user equipment devices. Variousdevices and platforms that may implement media guidance applications aredescribed in more detail below.

One of the functions of the media guidance application is to providemedia guidance data to users. As referred to herein, the phrase “mediaguidance data” or “guidance data” should be understood to mean any datarelated to content or data used in operating the guidance application.For example, the guidance data may include program information, guidanceapplication settings, user preferences, user profile information, medialistings, media-related information (e.g., broadcast times, broadcastchannels, titles, descriptions, ratings information (e.g., parentalcontrol ratings, critic's ratings, etc.), genre or category information,actor information, logo data for broadcasters' or providers' logos,etc.), media format (e.g., standard definition, high definition, 3D,etc.), on-demand information, blogs, websites, and any other type ofguidance data that is helpful for a user to navigate among and locatedesired content selections.

FIGS. 5-6 show illustrative display screens that may be used to providemedia guidance data. The display screens shown in FIGS. 5-6 may beimplemented on any suitable user equipment device or platform. While thedisplays of FIGS. 5-6 are illustrated as full screen displays, they mayalso be fully or partially overlaid over content being displayed. A usermay indicate a desire to access content information by selecting aselectable option provided in a display screen (e.g., a menu option, alistings option, an icon, a hyperlink, etc.) or pressing a dedicatedbutton (e.g., a GUIDE button) on a remote control or other user inputinterface or device. In response to the user's indication, the mediaguidance application may provide a display screen with media guidancedata organized in one of several ways, such as by time and channel in agrid, by time, by channel, by source, by content type, by category(e.g., movies, sports, news, children, or other categories ofprogramming), or other predefined, user-defined, or other organizationcriteria.

FIG. 5 shows illustrative grid of a program listings display 500arranged by time and channel that also enables access to different typesof content in a single display. Display 500 may include grid 502 with:(1) a column of channel/content type identifiers 504, where eachchannel/content type identifier (which is a cell in the column)identifies a different channel or content type available; and (2) a rowof time identifiers 506, where each time identifier (which is a cell inthe row) identifies a time block of programming. Grid 502 also includescells of program listings, such as program listing 508, where eachlisting provides the title of the program provided on the listing'sassociated channel and time. With a user input device, a user can selectprogram listings by moving highlight region 510. Information relating tothe program listing selected by highlight region 510 may be provided inprogram information region 512. Region 512 may include, for example, theprogram title, the program description, the time the 3C program isprovided (if applicable), the channel the program is on (if applicable),the program's rating, and other desired information.

In addition to providing access to linear programming (e.g., contentthat is scheduled to be transmitted to a plurality of user equipmentdevices at a predetermined time and is provided according to aschedule), the media guidance application also provides access tonon-linear programming (e.g., content accessible to a user equipmentdevice at any time and is not provided according to a schedule).Non-linear programming may include content from different contentsources including on-demand content (e.g., VOD), Internet content (e.g.,streaming media, downloadable media, etc.), locally stored content(e.g., content stored on any user equipment device described above orother storage device), or other time-independent content. On-demandcontent may include movies or any other content provided by a particularcontent provider (e.g., HBO On Demand providing “The Sopranos” and “CurbYour Enthusiasm”). HBO ON DEMAND is a service mark owned by Time WarnerCompany L.P. et al. and THE SOPRANOS and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM aretrademarks owned by the Home Box Office, Inc. Internet content mayinclude web events, such as a chat session or Webcast, or contentavailable on-demand as streaming content or downloadable content throughan Internet web site or other Internet access (e.g. FTP).

Grid 502 may provide media guidance data for non-linear programmingincluding on-demand listing 514, recorded content listing 516, andInternet content listing 518. A display combining media guidance datafor content from different types of content sources is sometimesreferred to as a “mixed-media” display. Various permutations of thetypes of media guidance data that may be displayed that are differentthan display 500 may be based on user selection or guidance applicationdefinition (e.g., a display of only recorded and broadcast listings,only on-demand and broadcast listings, etc.). As illustrated, listings514, 516, and 518 are shown as spanning the entire time block displayedin grid 502 to indicate that selection of these listings may provideaccess to a display dedicated to on-demand listings, recorded listings,or Internet listings, respectively. In some embodiments, listings forthese content types may be included directly in grid 502. Additionalmedia guidance data may be displayed in response to the user selectingone of the navigational icons 520. (Pressing an arrow key on a userinput device may affect the display in a similar manner as selectingnavigational icons 520.)

Display 500 may also include video region 522, and options region 526.Video region 522 may allow the user to view and/or preview programs thatare currently available, will be available, or were available to theuser. The content of video region 522 may correspond to, or beindependent from, one of the listings displayed in grid 502. Griddisplays including a video region are sometimes referred to aspicture-in-guide (PIG) displays. PIG displays and their functionalitiesare described in greater detail in Satterfield et al. U.S. Pat. No.6,564,378, issued May 13, 2003 and Yuen et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,239,794,issued May 29, 2001, which are hereby incorporated by reference hereinin their entireties. PIG displays may be included in other mediaguidance application display screens of the embodiments describedherein.

Options region 526 may allow the user to access different types ofcontent, media guidance application displays, and/or media guidanceapplication features. Options region 526 may be part of display 500 (andother display screens described herein), or may be invoked by a user byselecting an on-screen option or pressing a dedicated or assignablebutton on a user input device. The selectable options within optionsregion 526 may concern features related to program listings in grid 502or may include options available from a main menu display. Featuresrelated to program listings may include searching for other air times orways of receiving a program, recording a program, enabling seriesrecording of a program, setting program and/or channel as a favorite,purchasing a program, or other features. Options available from a mainmenu display may include search options, VOD options, parental controloptions, Internet options, cloud-based options, device synchronizationoptions, second screen device options, options to access various typesof media guidance data displays, options to subscribe to a premiumservice, options to edit a user's profile, options to access a browseoverlay, or other options.

The media guidance application may be personalized based on a user'spreferences. A personalized media guidance application allows a user tocustomize displays and features to create a personalized “experience”with the media guidance application. This personalized experience may becreated by allowing a user to input these customizations and/or by themedia guidance application monitoring user activity to determine varioususer preferences. Users may access their personalized guidanceapplication by logging in or otherwise identifying themselves to theguidance application. Customization of the media guidance applicationmay be made in accordance with a user profile. The customizations mayinclude varying presentation schemes (e.g., color scheme of displays,font size of text, etc.), aspects of content listings displayed (e.g.,only HDTV or only 3D programming, user-specified broadcast channelsbased on favorite channel selections, re-ordering the display ofchannels, recommended content, etc.), desired recording features (e.g.,recording or series recordings for particular users, recording quality,etc.), parental control settings, customized presentation of Internetcontent (e.g., presentation of social media content, e-mail,electronically delivered articles, etc.) and other desiredcustomizations.

The media guidance application may allow a user to provide user profileinformation or may automatically compile user profile information. Themedia guidance application may, for example, monitor the content theuser accesses and/or other interactions the user may have with theguidance application. Additionally, the media guidance application mayobtain all or part of other user profiles that are related to aparticular user (e.g., from other web sites on the Internet the useraccesses, such as www.allrovi.com, from other media guidanceapplications the user accesses, from other interactive applications theuser accesses, from another user equipment device of the user, etc.),and/or obtain information about the user from other sources that themedia guidance application may access. As a result, a user can beprovided with a unified guidance application experience across theuser's different user equipment devices. This type of user experience isdescribed in greater detail below in connection with FIG. 8 . Additionalpersonalized media guidance application features are described ingreater detail in Ellis et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No.2005/0251827, filed Jul. 11, 2005, Boyer et al., U.S. Pat. No.7,165,098, issued Jan. 16, 2007, and Ellis et al., U.S. PatentApplication Publication No. 2002/0174430, filed Feb. 21, 2002, which arehereby incorporated by reference herein in their entireties.

Another display arrangement for providing media guidance is shown inFIG. 6 . Video mosaic display 600 includes selectable options 602 forcontent information organized based on content type, genre, and/or otherorganization criteria. In display 600, television listings option 604 isselected, thus providing listings 606, 608, 610, and 612 as broadcastprogram listings. In display 600 the listings may provide graphicalimages including cover art, still images from the content, video clippreviews, live video from the content, or other types of content thatindicate to a user the content being described by the media guidancedata in the listing. Each of the graphical listings may also beaccompanied by text to provide further information about the contentassociated with the listing. For example, listing 608 may include morethan one portion, including media portion 614 and text portion 616.Media portion 614 and/or text portion 616 may be selectable to viewcontent in full-screen or to view information related to the contentdisplayed in media portion 614 (e.g., to view listings for the channelthat the video is displayed on).

The listings in display 600 are of different sizes (i.e., listing 606 islarger than listings 608, 610, and 612), but if desired, all thelistings may be the same size. Listings may be of different sizes orgraphically accentuated to indicate degrees of interest to the user orto emphasize certain content, as desired by the content provider orbased on user preferences. Various systems and methods for graphicallyaccentuating content listings are discussed in, for example, Yates, U.S.Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0153885, filed Nov. 12, 2009,which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

Users may access content and the media guidance application (and itsdisplay screens described above and below) from one or more of theiruser equipment devices. FIG. 7 shows a generalized embodiment ofillustrative user equipment device 700. More specific implementations ofuser equipment devices are discussed below in connection with FIG. 8 .User equipment device 700 may receive content and data via input/output(hereinafter “I/O”) path 702. I/O path 702 may provide content (e.g.,broadcast programming, on-demand programming, Internet content, contentavailable over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN),and/or other content) and data to control circuitry 704, which includesprocessing circuitry 706 and storage 708. Control circuitry 704 may beused to send and receive commands, requests, and other suitable datausing I/O path 702. I/O path 702 may connect control circuitry 704 (andspecifically processing circuitry 706) to one or more communicationspaths (described below). I/O functions may be provided by one or more ofthese communications paths, but are shown as a single path in FIG. 7 toavoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Control circuitry 704 may be based on any suitable processing circuitrysuch as processing circuitry 706. As referred to herein, processingcircuitry should be understood to mean circuitry based on one or moremicroprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors,programmable logic devices, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), etc., and may includea multi-core processor (e.g., dual-core, quad-core, hexa-core, or anysuitable number of cores) or supercomputer. In some embodiments,processing circuitry may be distributed across multiple separateprocessors or processing units, for example, multiple of the same typeof processing units (e.g., two Intel Core i7 processors) or multipledifferent processors (e.g., an Intel Core i5 processor and an Intel Corei7 processor). In some embodiments, control circuitry 704 executesinstructions for a media guidance application stored in memory (i.e.,storage 708). Specifically, control circuitry 704 may be instructed bythe media guidance application to perform the functions discussed aboveand below. For example, the media guidance application may provideinstructions to control circuitry 704 to generate the media guidancedisplays. In some implementations, any action performed by controlcircuitry 704 may be based on instructions received from the mediaguidance application.

In client-server based embodiments, control circuitry 704 may includecommunications circuitry suitable for communicating with a guidanceapplication server or other networks or servers. The instructions forcarrying out the above mentioned functionality may be stored on theguidance application server. Communications circuitry may include acable modem, an integrated services digital network (ISDN) modem, adigital subscriber line (DSL) modem, a telephone modem, Ethernet card,or a wireless modem for communications with other equipment, or anyother suitable communications circuitry. Such communications may involvethe Internet or any other suitable communications networks or paths(which is described in more detail in connection with FIG. 8 ). Inaddition, communications circuitry may include circuitry that enablespeer-to-peer communication of user equipment devices, or communicationof user equipment devices in locations remote from each other (describedin more detail below).

Memory may be an electronic storage device provided as storage 708 thatis part of control circuitry 704. As referred to herein, the phrase“electronic storage device” or “storage device” should be understood tomean any device for storing electronic data, computer software, orfirmware, such as random-access memory, read-only memory, hard drives,optical drives, digital video disc (DVD) recorders, compact disc (CD)recorders, BLU-RAY disc (BD) recorders, BLU-RAY 3D disc recorders,digital video recorders (DVR, sometimes called a personal videorecorder, or PVR), solid state devices, quantum storage devices, gamingconsoles, gaming media, or any other suitable fixed or removable storagedevices, and/or any combination of the same. Storage 708 may be used tostore various types of content described herein as well as mediaguidance data described above. Nonvolatile memory may also be used(e.g., to launch a boot-up routine and other instructions). Cloud-basedstorage, described in relation to FIG. 8 , may be used to supplementstorage 708 or instead of storage 708.

Control circuitry 704 may include video generating circuitry and tuningcircuitry, such as one or more analog tuners, one or more MPEG-2decoders or other digital decoding circuitry, high-definition tuners, orany other suitable tuning or video circuits or combinations of suchcircuits. Encoding circuitry (e.g., for converting over-the-air, analog,or digital signals to MPEG signals for storage) may also be provided.Control circuitry 704 may also include scaler circuitry for upconvertingand downconverting content into the preferred output format of the userequipment 700. Circuitry 704 may also include digital-to-analogconverter circuitry and analog-to-digital converter circuitry forconverting between digital and analog signals. The tuning and encodingcircuitry may be used by the user equipment device to receive and todisplay, to play, or to record content. The tuning and encodingcircuitry may also be used to receive guidance data. The circuitrydescribed herein, including for example, the tuning, video generating,encoding, decoding, encrypting, decrypting, scaler, and analog/digitalcircuitry, may be implemented using software running on one or moregeneral purpose or specialized processors. Multiple tuners may beprovided to handle simultaneous tuning functions (e.g., watch and recordfunctions, picture-in-picture (PIP) functions, multiple-tuner recording,etc.). If storage 708 is provided as a separate device from userequipment 700, the tuning and encoding circuitry (including multipletuners) may be associated with storage 708.

A user may send instructions to control circuitry 704 using user inputinterface 710. User input interface 710 may be any suitable userinterface, such as a remote control, mouse, trackball, keypad, keyboard,touch screen, touchpad, stylus input, joystick, voice recognitioninterface, or other user input interfaces. Display 712 may be providedas a stand-alone device or integrated with other elements of userequipment device 700. For example, display 712 may be a touchscreen ortouch-sensitive display. In such circumstances, user input interface 710may be integrated with or combined with display 712. Display 712 may beone or more of a monitor, a television, a liquid crystal display (LCD)for a mobile device, amorphous silicon display, low temperature polysilicon display, electronic ink display, electrophoretic display, activematrix display, electro-wetting display, electrofluidic display, cathoderay tube display, light-emitting diode display, electroluminescentdisplay, plasma display panel, high-performance addressing display,thin-film transistor display, organic light-emitting diode display,surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED), laser television,carbon nanotubes, quantum dot display, interferometric modulatordisplay, or any other suitable equipment for displaying visual images.In some embodiments, display 712 may be HDTV-capable. In someembodiments, display 712 may be a 3D display, and the interactive mediaguidance application and any suitable content may be displayed in 3D. Avideo card or graphics card may generate the output to the display 712.The video card may offer various functions such as accelerated renderingof 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or theability to connect multiple monitors. The video card may be anyprocessing circuitry described above in relation to control circuitry704. The video card may be integrated with the control circuitry 704.Speakers 714 may be provided as integrated with other elements of userequipment device 700 or may be stand-alone units. The audio component ofvideos and other content displayed on display 712 may be played throughspeakers 714. In some embodiments, the audio may be distributed to areceiver (not shown), which processes and outputs the audio via speakers714.

The guidance application may be implemented using any suitablearchitecture. For example, it may be a stand-alone applicationwholly-implemented on user equipment device 700. In such an approach,instructions of the application are stored locally (e.g., in storage708), and data for use by the application is downloaded on a periodicbasis (e.g., from an out-of-band feed, from an Internet resource, orusing another suitable approach). Control circuitry 704 may retrieveinstructions of the application from storage 708 and process theinstructions to generate any of the displays discussed herein. Based onthe processed instructions, control circuitry 704 may determine whataction to perform when input is received from input interface 710. Forexample, movement of a cursor on a display up/down may be indicated bythe processed instructions when input interface 710 indicates that anup/down button was selected.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is a client-serverbased application. Data for use by a thick or thin client implemented onuser equipment device 700 is retrieved on-demand by issuing requests toa server remote to the user equipment device 700. In one example of aclient-server based guidance application, control circuitry 704 runs aweb browser that interprets web pages provided by a remote server. Forexample, the remote server may store the instructions for theapplication in a storage device. The remote server may process thestored instructions using circuitry (e.g., control circuitry 704) andgenerate the displays discussed above and below. The client device mayreceive the displays generated by the remote server and may display thecontent of the displays locally on equipment device 700. This way, theprocessing of the instructions is performed remotely by the server whilethe resulting displays are provided locally on equipment device 700.Equipment device 700 may receive inputs from the user via inputinterface 710 and transmit those inputs to the remote server forprocessing and generating the corresponding displays. For example,equipment device 700 may transmit a communication to the remote serverindicating that an up/down button was selected via input interface 710.The remote server may process instructions in accordance with that inputand generate a display of the application corresponding to the input(e.g., a display that moves a cursor up/down). The generated display isthen transmitted to equipment device 700 for presentation to the user.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is downloaded andinterpreted or otherwise run by an interpreter or virtual machine (runby control circuitry 704). In some embodiments, the guidance applicationmay be encoded in the ETV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF), received bycontrol circuitry 704 as part of a suitable feed, and interpreted by auser agent running on control circuitry 704. For example, the guidanceapplication may be an EBIF application. In some embodiments, theguidance application may be defined by a series of JAVA-based files thatare received and run by a local virtual machine or other suitablemiddleware executed by control circuitry 704. In some of suchembodiments (e.g., those employing MPEG-2 or other digital mediaencoding schemes), the guidance application may be, for example, encodedand transmitted in an MPEG-2 object carousel with the MPEG audio andvideo packets of a program.

User equipment device 700 of FIG. 7 can be implemented in system 800 ofFIG. 8 as user television equipment 802, user computer equipment 804,wireless user communications device 806, or any other type of userequipment suitable for accessing content, such as a non-portable gamingmachine. For simplicity, these devices may be referred to hereincollectively as user equipment or user equipment devices, and may besubstantially similar to user equipment devices described above. Userequipment devices, on which a media guidance application may beimplemented, may function as a standalone device or may be part of anetwork of devices. Various network configurations of devices may beimplemented and are discussed in more detail below.

A user equipment device utilizing at least some of the system featuresdescribed above in connection with FIG. 7 may not be classified solelyas user television equipment 802, user computer equipment 804, or awireless user communications device 806. For example, user televisionequipment 802 may, like some user computer equipment 804, beInternet-enabled allowing for access to Internet content, while usercomputer equipment 804 may, like some television equipment 802, includea tuner allowing for access to television programming. The mediaguidance application may have the same layout on various different typesof user equipment or may be tailored to the display capabilities of theuser equipment. For example, on user computer equipment 804, theguidance application may be provided as a web site accessed by a webbrowser. In another example, the guidance application may be scaled downfor wireless user communications devices 806.

In system 800, there is typically more than one of each type of userequipment device but only one of each is shown in FIG. 8 to avoidovercomplicating the drawing. In addition, each user may utilize morethan one type of user equipment device and also more than one of eachtype of user equipment device.

In some embodiments, a user equipment device (e.g., user televisionequipment 802, user computer equipment 804, wireless user communicationsdevice 806) may be referred to as a “second screen device.” For example,a second screen device may supplement content presented on a first userequipment device. The content presented on the second screen device maybe any suitable content that supplements the content presented on thefirst device. In some embodiments, the second screen device provides aninterface for adjusting settings and display preferences of the firstdevice. In some embodiments, the second screen device is configured forinteracting with other second screen devices or for interacting with asocial network. The second screen device can be located in the same roomas the first device, a different room from the first device but in thesame house or building, or in a different building from the firstdevice.

The user may also set various settings to maintain consistent mediaguidance application settings across in-home devices and remote devices.Settings include those described herein, as well as channel and programfavorites, programming preferences that the guidance applicationutilizes to make programming recommendations, display preferences, andother desirable guidance settings. For example, if a user sets a channelas a favorite on, for example, the web site www.allrovi.com on theirpersonal computer at their office, the same channel would appear as afavorite on the user's in-home devices (e.g., user television equipmentand user computer equipment) as well as the user's mobile devices, ifdesired. Therefore, changes made on one user equipment device can changethe guidance experience on another user equipment device, regardless ofwhether they are the same or a different type of user equipment device.In addition, the changes made may be based on settings input by a user,as well as user activity monitored by the guidance application.

The user equipment devices may be coupled to communications network 814.Namely, user television equipment 802, user computer equipment 804, andwireless user communications device 806 are coupled to communicationsnetwork 814 via communications paths 808, 810, and 812, respectively.Communications network 814 may be one or more networks including theInternet, a mobile phone network, mobile voice or data network (e.g., a4G or LTE network), cable network, public switched telephone network, orother types of communications network or combinations of communicationsnetworks.

Paths 808, 810, and 812 may separately or together include one or morecommunications paths, such as, a satellite path, a fiber-optic path, acable path, a path that supports Internet communications (e.g., IPTV),free-space connections (e.g., for broadcast or other wireless signals),or any other suitable wired or wireless communications path orcombination of such paths. Path 812 is drawn with dotted lines toindicate that in the exemplary embodiment shown in FIG. 8 it is awireless path and paths 808 and 810 are drawn as solid lines to indicatethey are wired paths (although these paths may be wireless paths, ifdesired). Communications with the user equipment devices may be providedby one or more of these communications paths, but are shown as a singlepath in FIG. 8 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Although communications paths are not drawn between user equipmentdevices, these devices may communicate directly with each other viacommunication paths, such as those described above in connection withpaths 808, 810, and 812, as well as other short-range point-to-pointcommunication paths, such as USB cables, IEEE 1394 cables, wirelesspaths (e.g., Bluetooth, infrared, IEEE 802-11x, etc.), or othershort-range communication via wired or wireless paths. BLUETOOTH is acertification mark owned by Bluetooth SIG, INC. The user equipmentdevices may also communicate with each other directly through anindirect path via communications network 814.

System 800 includes content source 816 and media guidance data source818 coupled to communications network 814 via communication paths 820and 822, respectively. Paths 820 and 822 may include any of thecommunication paths described above in connection with paths 808, 810,and 812. Communications with the content source 816 and media guidancedata source 818 may be exchanged over one or more communications paths,but are shown as a single path in FIG. 8 to avoid overcomplicating thedrawing. In addition, there may be more than one of each of contentsource 816 and media guidance data source 818, but only one of each isshown in FIG. 8 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing. (The differenttypes of each of these sources are discussed below.) If desired, contentsource 816 and media guidance data source 818 may be integrated as onesource device. Although communications between sources 816 and 818 withuser equipment devices 802, 804, and 806 are shown as throughcommunications network 814, in some embodiments, sources 816 and 818 maycommunicate directly with user equipment devices 802, 804, and 806 viacommunication paths (not shown) such as those described above inconnection with paths 808, 810, and 812.

Content source 816 may include one or more types of content distributionequipment including a television distribution facility, cable systemheadend, satellite distribution facility, programming sources (e.g.,television broadcasters, such as NBC, ABC, HBO, etc.), intermediatedistribution facilities and/or servers, Internet providers, on-demandmedia servers, and other content providers. NBC is a trademark owned bythe National Broadcasting Company, Inc., ABC is a trademark owned by theAmerican Broadcasting Company, Inc., and HBO is a trademark owned by theHome Box Office, Inc. Content source 816 may be the originator ofcontent (e.g., a television broadcaster, a Webcast provider, etc.) ormay not be the originator of content (e.g., an on-demand contentprovider, an Internet provider of content of broadcast programs fordownloading, etc.). Content source 816 may include cable sources,satellite providers, on-demand providers, Internet providers,over-the-top content providers, or other providers of content. Contentsource 816 may also include a remote media server used to storedifferent types of content (including video content selected by a user),in a location remote from any of the user equipment devices. Systems andmethods for remote storage of content, and providing remotely storedcontent to user equipment are discussed in greater detail in connectionwith Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,761,892, issued Jul. 20, 2010, whichis hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

Media guidance data source 818 may provide media guidance data, such asthe media guidance data described above. Media guidance data may beprovided to the user equipment devices using any suitable approach. Insome embodiments, the guidance application may be a stand-aloneinteractive television program guide that receives program guide datavia a data feed (e.g., a continuous feed or trickle feed). Programschedule data and other guidance data may be provided to the userequipment on a television channel sideband, using an in-band digitalsignal, using an out-of-band digital signal, or by any other suitabledata transmission technique. Program schedule data and other mediaguidance data may be provided to user equipment on multiple analog ordigital television channels.

In some embodiments, guidance data from media guidance data source 818may be provided to users' equipment using a client-server approach. Forexample, a user equipment device may pull media guidance data from aserver, or a server may push media guidance data to a user equipmentdevice. In some embodiments, a guidance application client residing onthe user's equipment may initiate sessions with source 818 to obtainguidance data when needed, e.g., when the guidance data is out of dateor when the user equipment device receives a request from the user toreceive data. Media guidance may be provided to the user equipment withany suitable frequency (e.g., continuously, daily, a user-specifiedperiod of time, a system-specified period of time, in response to arequest from user equipment, etc.). Media guidance data source 818 mayprovide user equipment devices 802, 804, and 806 the media guidanceapplication itself or software updates for the media guidanceapplication.

In some embodiments, the media guidance data may include viewer data.For example, the viewer data may include current and/or historical useractivity information (e.g., what content the user typically watches,what times of day the user watches content, whether the user interactswith a social network, at what times the user interacts with a socialnetwork to post information, what types of content the user typicallywatches (e.g., pay TV or free TV), mood, brain activity information,etc.). The media guidance data may also include subscription data. Forexample, the subscription data may identify to which sources or servicesa given user subscribes and/or to which sources or services the givenuser has previously subscribed but later terminated access (e.g.,whether the user subscribes to premium channels, whether the user hasadded a premium level of services, whether the user has increasedInternet speed). In some embodiments, the viewer data and/or thesubscription data may identify patterns of a given user for a period ofmore than one year. The media guidance data may include a model (e.g., asurvivor model) used for generating a score that indicates a likelihooda given user will terminate access to a service/source. For example, themedia guidance application may process the viewer data with thesubscription data using the model to generate a value or score thatindicates a likelihood of whether the given user will terminate accessto a particular service or source. In particular, a higher score mayindicate a higher level of confidence that the user will terminateaccess to a particular service or source. Based on the score, the mediaguidance application may generate promotions that entice the user tokeep the particular service or source indicated by the score as one towhich the user will likely terminate access.

Media guidance applications may be, for example, stand-aloneapplications implemented on user equipment devices. For example, themedia guidance application may be implemented as software or a set ofexecutable instructions which may be stored in storage 708, and executedby control circuitry 704 of a user equipment device 700. In someembodiments, media guidance applications may be client-serverapplications where only a client application resides on the userequipment device, and server application resides on a remote server. Forexample, media guidance applications may be implemented partially as aclient application on control circuitry 704 of user equipment device 700and partially on a remote server as a server application (e.g., mediaguidance data source 818) running on control circuitry of the remoteserver. When executed by control circuitry of the remote server (such asmedia guidance data source 818), the media guidance application mayinstruct the control circuitry to generate the guidance applicationdisplays and transmit the generated displays to the user equipmentdevices. The server application may instruct the control circuitry ofthe media guidance data source 818 to transmit data for storage on theuser equipment. The client application may instruct control circuitry ofthe receiving user equipment to generate the guidance applicationdisplays.

Content and/or media guidance data delivered to user equipment devices802, 804, and 806 may be over-the-top (OTT) content. OTT contentdelivery allows Internet-enabled user devices, including any userequipment device described above, to receive content that is transferredover the Internet, including any content described above, in addition tocontent received over cable or satellite connections. OTT content isdelivered via an Internet connection provided by an Internet serviceprovider (ISP), but a third-party distributes the content. The ISP maynot be responsible for the viewing abilities, copyrights, orredistribution of the content, and may only transfer IP packets providedby the OTT content provider. Examples of OTT content providers includeYOUTUBE, NETFLIX, and HULU, which provide audio and video via IPpackets. Youtube is a trademark owned by Google Inc., Netflix is atrademark owned by Netflix Inc., and Hulu is a trademark owned by Hulu,LLC. OTT content providers may additionally or alternatively providemedia guidance data described above. In addition to content and/or mediaguidance data, providers of OTT content can distribute media guidanceapplications (e.g., web-based applications or cloud-based applications),or the content can be displayed by media guidance applications stored onthe user equipment device.

Media guidance system 800 is intended to illustrate a number ofapproaches, or network configurations, by which user equipment devicesand sources of content and guidance data may communicate with each otherfor the purpose of accessing content and providing media guidance. Theembodiments described herein may be applied in any one or a subset ofthese approaches, or in a system employing other approaches fordelivering content and providing media guidance. The following fourapproaches provide specific illustrations of the generalized example ofFIG. 8 .

In one approach, user equipment devices may communicate with each otherwithin a home network. User equipment devices can communicate with eachother directly via short-range point-to-point communication schemesdescribed above, via indirect paths through a hub or other similardevice provided on a home network, or via communications network 814.Each of the multiple individuals in a single home may operate differentuser equipment devices on the home network.

As a result, it may be desirable for various media guidance informationor settings to be communicated between the different user equipmentdevices. For example, it may be desirable for users to maintainconsistent media guidance application settings on different userequipment devices within a home network, as described in greater detailin Ellis et al., U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0251827, filed Jul.11, 2005. Different types of user equipment devices in a home networkmay also communicate with each other to transmit content. For example, auser may transmit content from user computer equipment to a portablevideo player or portable music player.

In a second approach, users may have multiple types of user equipment bywhich they access content and obtain media guidance. For example, someusers may have home networks that are accessed by in-home and mobiledevices. Users may control in-home devices via a media guidanceapplication implemented on a remote device. For example, users mayaccess an online media guidance application on a website via a personalcomputer at their office, or a mobile device such as a PDA orweb-enabled mobile telephone. The user may set various settings (e.g.,recordings, reminders, or other settings) on the online guidanceapplication to control the user's in-home equipment. The online guidemay control the user's equipment directly, or by communicating with amedia guidance application on the user's in-home equipment. Varioussystems and methods for user equipment devices communicating, where theuser equipment devices are in locations remote from each other, isdiscussed in, for example, Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 8,046,801, issuedOct. 25, 2011, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in itsentirety.

In a third approach, users of user equipment devices inside and outsidea home can use their media guidance application to communicate directlywith content source 816 to access content. Specifically, within a home,users of user television equipment 802 and user computer equipment 804may access the media guidance application to navigate among and locatedesirable content. Users may also access the media guidance applicationoutside of the home using wireless user communications devices 806 tonavigate among and locate desirable content.

In a fourth approach, user equipment devices may operate in a cloudcomputing environment to access cloud services. In a cloud computingenvironment, various types of computing services for content sharing,storage or distribution (e.g., video sharing sites or social networkingsites) are provided by a collection of network-accessible computing andstorage resources, referred to as “the cloud.” For example, the cloudcan include a collection of server computing devices, which may belocated centrally or at distributed locations, that provide cloud-basedservices to various types of users and devices connected via a networksuch as the Internet via communications network 814. These cloudresources may include one or more content sources 816 and one or moremedia guidance data sources 818. In addition or in the alternative, theremote computing sites may include other user equipment devices, such asuser television equipment 802, user computer equipment 804, and wirelessuser communications device 806. For example, the other user equipmentdevices may provide access to a stored copy of a video or a streamedvideo. In such embodiments, user equipment devices may operate in apeer-to-peer manner without communicating with a central server.

The cloud provides access to services, such as content storage, contentsharing, or social networking services, among other examples, as well asaccess to any content described above, for user equipment devices.Services can be provided in the cloud through cloud computing serviceproviders, or through other providers of online services. For example,the cloud-based services can include a content storage service, acontent sharing site, a social networking site, or other services viawhich user-sourced content is distributed for viewing by others onconnected devices. These cloud-based services may allow a user equipmentdevice to store content to the cloud and to receive content from thecloud rather than storing content locally and accessing locally-storedcontent.

A user may use various content capture devices, such as camcorders,digital cameras with video mode, audio recorders, mobile phones, andhandheld computing devices, to record content. The user can uploadcontent to a content storage service on the cloud either directly, forexample, from user computer equipment 804 or wireless usercommunications device 806 having content capture feature. Alternatively,the user can first transfer the content to a user equipment device, suchas user computer equipment 804. The user equipment device storing thecontent uploads the content to the cloud using a data transmissionservice on communications network 814. In some embodiments, the userequipment device itself is a cloud resource, and other user equipmentdevices can access the content directly from the user equipment deviceon which the user stored the content.

Cloud resources may be accessed by a user equipment device using, forexample, a web browser, a media guidance application, a desktopapplication, a mobile application, and/or any combination of accessapplications of the same. The user equipment device may be a cloudclient that relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or theuser equipment device may have some functionality without access tocloud resources. For example, some applications running on the userequipment device may be cloud applications, i.e., applications deliveredas a service over the Internet, while other applications may be storedand run on the user equipment device. In some embodiments, a user devicemay receive content from multiple cloud resources simultaneously. Forexample, a user device can stream audio from one cloud resource whiledownloading content from a second cloud resource. Or a user device candownload content from multiple cloud resources for more efficientdownloading. In some embodiments, user equipment devices can use cloudresources for processing operations such as the processing operationsperformed by processing circuitry described in relation to FIG. 7 .

As referred herein, the term “in response to” refers to initiated as aresult of. For example, a first action being performed in response to asecond action may include interstitial steps between the first actionand the second action. As referred herein, the term “directly inresponse to” refers to caused by. For example, a first action beingperformed directly in response to a second action may not includeinterstitial steps between the first action and the second action.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart of an illustrative process 900 for controlcircuitry (e.g., control circuitry 704 of FIG. 7 ) to resume a mediaasset using a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. In some embodiments, this algorithm maybe encoded onto a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., storage device708) as a set of instructions to be decoded and executed by processingcircuitry (e.g., processing circuitry 706). Processing circuitry 706may, in turn, provide instructions to other sub-circuits containedwithin control circuitry 704, such as the tuning, video generating,encoding, decoding, encrypting, decrypting, scaling, analog/digitalconversion circuitry, and the like.

At 910, a media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704 toextract metadata associated with the media asset, whereby the metadataincludes a plurality of positions in the media asset. For example, themedia guidance application may receive an on-demand program on the firstpresidential debate of the year when a user selects the program fordisplay. The media guidance application may receive the on-demandprogram from a remote server, such as media content source 816 via path820, along with the metadata associated with on-demand program. In thisembodiment, the media guidance application may receive the on-demandprogram from media content source 816 and receive the metadataseparately from media guidance data source 818 via path 822, and matchthe metadata with the on-demand program locally at the user equipment.In either scenario, the media guidance application may extract metadataassociated with the on-demand Presidential Debate, which contains sixsegments of videos lasting for a total of 90 minutes. The metadata inthis example may include, among other things, time stamps correspondingto the start time and end time for each segment, for each candidate'sresponse, and for each sentence. For consistency, we assume that theon-demand program as used in this example runs from 00:00:00 to01:30:00.

At 920, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to receive a first input from a user to pause the media asset at a firstposition of the plurality of positions. The first input from the usermay be received via user input interface 710 and processed by processingcircuitry 706 of control circuitry 704.

For example, the media guidance application may receive an input from auser to pause the on-demand Presidential Debate program at 01:02:01,which is a time stamp among a plurality of time stamps. The time stamp01:02:01 may also be referred to as a first “position” of the on-demandprogram, and may indicate the progress the user has made in theon-demand program. In the above example, the user has watched 32 minutesand 15 seconds of the on-demand program. In this embodiment, theplurality of time stamps as stored in the metadata may be all the timestamps that are available from the metadata associated with the mediaasset, that is, each and every time stamp within the range of 00:00:00and 01:30:00. For example, the metadata may contain time stamps00:00:01, 00:00:02 . . . 01:29:59, and 01:30:00.

At 930, based on receiving the first input from the user, the mediaguidance application may cause control circuitry 704 to store the firstposition in a bookmark for the media asset. For example, based onreceiving the first input from the user to pause the on-demand programat 01:02:01, the media guidance application may store the first position(i.e., “01:02:01”) in the bookmark. In this embodiment, the bookmark maybe stored locally at the user equipment, such as in storage 708 of usercomputer equipment 804. In some other embodiments, the first position ofthe program may be transmitted from the user equipment to a remoteserver, where it may be stored in a bookmark in the cloud.

At 940, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to determine that the first position in the media asset corresponds to amiddle of a sentence based on the metadata; For example, the mediaguidance application may determine that the first position correspondsto the middle of a sentence based on the metadata, which, as describedabove, contains the start and end times of each sentence in theon-demand program. In this particular example, the media guidanceapplication may determine from the metadata that a sentence being spokenby one of the speakers runs from 01:01:59 to 01:02:21, such as thesentence shown in row 428 of the metadata presented in FIG. 4 . In thisembodiment, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry704 to make the determination that the first position corresponds to themiddle of the sentence by determining, based on the metadata, a secondposition and a third position of the plurality of positions in the mediaasset corresponding to a start and an end of the sentence, respectively.For example, the media guidance application may determine that thepaused sentence at the first position (“01:02:01”) has a second positioncorresponding to the start of the sentence at 01:01:59, and a thirdposition corresponding to the end of the sentence at 01:02:21. The mediaguidance application may further compare the first position against thesecond and the third positions to determine that the first position isbefore the third position and is after the second position. Continuingfrom the above examples, the media guidance application may compare thefirst position (“01:02:01”) against the second (“01:01:59”) and third(“01:02:21”) positions to determine that the first position is beforethe third position and is after the second position. Based on this, themedia guidance application is able to determine that the paused positioncuts a sentence in the middle.

At 950, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to determine a second position of the plurality of positions in themedia asset corresponding to a start of the sentence based on themetadata.

At 960, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry toupdate the bookmark to include the second position. For example, basedon the metadata as shown in FIG. 4 , the media guidance application maydetermine that the start of the paused sentence is at 01:01:59, asdiscussed above; and update the bookmark from the first position(“01:02:01”) to the second position (“01:01:59”). In this embodiment,the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704 to updatethe bookmark to include the second position by removing the firstposition from the bookmark for the media asset; and inserting the secondposition in the bookmark. For example, the media guidance applicationmay update the bookmark by removing the first position (“01:02:01”) fromthe bookmark and inserting the second position (“01:01:59”) into thebookmark. Alternatively, the media guidance application may causecontrol circuitry 704 to update the bookmark by simply adding the secondposition in addition to the first position.

At 970, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to receive a second input from the user to resume the media asset. Forexample, the media guidance application may cause processing circuitry706 to determine from user input interface 710 the user instruction toresume the media asset. In this embodiment, based on receiving thesecond input from the user, at 980, the media guidance application maycause control circuitry to generate the media asset for display from thebookmark. For example, the media guidance application may receive thesecond input from the user a few minutes after receiving the first inputto pause the program, in order to resume the on-demand program. Based onreceiving the second input, the media guidance application may generatethe program for display from the bookmarked second position (“01:01:59”)that corresponds to the beginning of the sentence that was cut off bythe pause.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart of an illustrative process 1000 for controlcircuitry (e.g., control circuitry 704 of FIG. 7 ) to resume a mediaasset using a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. Some embodiments of this algorithm may beencoded onto a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., storage device 708)as a set of instructions to be decoded and executed by processingcircuitry (e.g., processing circuitry 706). Processing circuitry 706may, in turn, provide instructions to other sub-circuits containedwithin control circuitry 704, such as the tuning, video generating,encoding, decoding, encrypting, decrypting, scaling, analog/digitalconversion circuitry, and the like.

At 1010, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to receive, at a first time, a first input from a user to pause a mediaasset at a first position. For example, the media guidance applicationmay receive a first input to pause a recorded program at position01:02:01, at 7:00 AM.

At 1020, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 705to receive, at second time, a second input from the user to resume themedia asset. For example, the media guidance application may receive asecond input to resume the recorded program at 8:00 AM. The mediaguidance application may cause control circuitry 705 to monitor userinputs at user input interface 710 with a constant loop in order tocapture the first and second inputs, and additionally may implement oneor more trigger timers to record the time stamps associated with eachinput. In this embodiment, the media guidance application may causecontrol circuitry 704 to be responsive to interrupts from the triggertimers such that both the absolute time (e.g., 7:00 AM or 8:00 AM in theabove example) as well as the relative progress as reflected by theposition (e.g., the “01:02:01” in the above example) are monitored andrecorded by the media guidance application.

At 1030, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to determine whether a time period between the first time and the secondtime is greater than a threshold time period. If the time period is notgreater than the threshold time period, the media guidance applicationmay cause control circuitry 704 to proceed to 1035. However, if the timeperiod is greater than the threshold time period, the media guidanceapplication may cause control circuitry 704 to proceed to 1040. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine the time periodbetween 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM, i.e., one hour, is greater than a thresholdtime period (e.g., 30 minutes). The media guidance application maydetermine one or more threshold time periods based on user priorconfiguration. In this embodiment, the media guidance application maygenerate for display to the user a plurality of options, wherein eachoption of the plurality of options corresponds to a threshold timeperiod. For example, the media guidance application may generate aplurality of threshold time periods as selectable options to the user,such as “5 minutes”. “15 minutes”, “30 minutes”, and “one day” etc.,each corresponding to a threshold time period that the user may selectthat designates how long the user is allowed to be absent for withoutresuming the media asset from an earlier position. For example, themedia guidance application may receive a selection of “30 minutes” fromthe user, which designates that the user allowed to be absent for 30minutes without having the media guidance application automaticallyresuming the program from an earlier position when the user selects toresume it. In other words, the user's selection of “30 minutes” as thethreshold time period would cause the media guidance application toresume the program from an earlier position (e.g., start of scene, startof line, etc.) when the user has paused the program for longer than thethreshold time period before resuming it. The user's selection of “15minutes” as the threshold time period would similarly cause the mediaguidance application to resume the program from the paused position (notan earlier position) when the user has paused the program for less thanthe threshold time period before resuming it.

At 1035, in response to determining that the time period is not greaterthan the threshold time period, the media guidance application may causecontrol circuitry 704 to generate the media asset for display beginningat the first position.

At 1040, in response to determining that the time period is greater thanthe threshold time period, the media guidance application may causecontrol circuitry 704 to receive metadata from a database, wherein themetadata comprises a plurality of time stamps, each time stamp of theplurality of time stamps corresponding to a starting time of a pluralityof scenes of the media asset. Continuing with the example above fromthis aspect of the disclosure, the media guidance application may, inresponse to determining that the one-hour time period is greater thanthe threshold time period of 30 minutes, receive metadata associatedwith the recorded program from a remote media content database, themetadata comprising time stamps corresponding to scenes within therecorded program. As discussed in another aspect of the presentdisclosure, the metadata associated with the media asset need notnecessarily be received in response to determining the time period thatthe user is away for is greater than the threshold time period. Instead,the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704 toreceive the metadata from a plurality of sources at any time, at anyfixed interval, or at the beginning of either process 900 or process1000. For example, the media guidance application may receive themetadata associated with the on-demand debate program in response toreceiving the user input to pause the on-demand program, resume theon-demand program, at the starting-up of the user equipment, or at thestart of the program itself. As discussed herein, the media guidanceapplication may cause control circuitry 704 to receive the metadata froma remote server, such as media guidance data source 818. Alternatively,the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704 toreceive the metadata from a local source, such as from local storage708.

At 1050, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to store the plurality of time stamps and the plurality of scenes as aplayback hierarchy. Continuing with the examples above, the mediaguidance application may, in response to determining that the one-hourtime period is greater than the threshold time period of 30 minutes,receive metadata associated with the recorded program from a remotemedia content database, such as media guidance data source 818, themetadata comprising time stamps corresponding to scenes within therecorded program. The media guidance application may store the timestamps and the scenes of the recorded program as a playback hierarchyfor the program. In this embodiment, the playback hierarchy may besubstantially similar to playback hierarchy 400 of FIG. 4 . Inparticular, a playback hierarchy that only contains time stamps andinformation related to “scenes” within a media asset may besubstantially similar to scene-level table 410 of FIG. 4 . In somefurther embodiments, the playback hierarchy may include additionallayers of information that keep track of sentence-level andcharacter-level data, among others. For example, the media guidanceapplication may link scene-level table 410 of the playback hierarchy tosentence-or-character-level table 420 in order to build an extendedplayback hierarchy with additional functionalities, as will be discussedbelow.

At 1060, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to determine a start of a recent scene of the media asset from theplayback hierarchy based on the first position.

At 1070, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to set the start of the recent scene as a second position of the mediaasset.

At 1080, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to generate the media asset for display beginning at the second positionpreceding the first position. For example, based on the first positionwhere the recorded program is paused (“01:02:01”), the media guidanceapplication may determine a start of the debate scene (i.e., “01:00:52”)and set the start of the debate scene as the second position to resumethe recorded program from. In this embodiment, the media guidanceapplication may further cause control circuitry 704 to update a bookmarkto include the second position. Details of the implementation of abookmark in process 1000 are substantially similar to the bookmarkimplementation in process 900, as described in relation to FIG. 9 above.Thereafter, the media guidance application may generate the program fordisplay from the beginning of the scene, as indicated by the secondposition that is preceding the first position.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart of an illustrative process 1100 for controlcircuitry (e.g., control circuitry 704 of FIG. 7 ) to resume a mediaasset using a media guidance application in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. Some embodiments of this algorithm may beencoded onto a non-transitory storage medium (e.g., storage device 708)as a set of instructions to be decoded and executed by processingcircuitry (e.g., processing circuitry 706). Processing circuitry 706may, in turn, provide instructions to other sub-circuits containedwithin control circuitry 704, such as the tuning, video generating,encoding, decoding, encrypting, decrypting, scaling, analog/digitalconversion circuitry, and the like.

At 1102, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to receive user configuration of a threshold time period. For example,the media guidance application may receive a user configuration of oneor more threshold time periods: “10 seconds”, “5 minutes”, and “2hours”, which may correspond to threshold_1, threshold_2, andthreshold_3 of FIG. 4 , respectively. In this embodiment, the mediaguidance application may receive the user configuration of thresholdtime periods by generating for display to the user a plurality ofoptions, wherein each option of the plurality of options corresponds toa threshold time period. For example, the media guidance application maydisplay a number of options each corresponding to a potential thresholdtime period for the user to select—“10 seconds”, “5 minutes”, and “2hours” and let the user decide which options best suit his or herlifestyle. In this embodiment, the media guidance application mayfurther generate a plurality of playback points for the user to relateto his or her selected threshold time periods. In this embodiment, themedia guidance application may receive a user selection of a thresholdtime period and a playback point from the plurality of options, whereinthe selections designate a corresponding threshold time period that theuser is allowed to be absent for without resuming the media asset fromthe playback point. For example, the media guidance application maygenerate a list of options for playback points—“resume from beginning ofthe sentence”, “resume from beginning of the current speaker's line”,“resume from beginning of the scene”, “resume from beginning of theprogram itself” . . . —for the user to match up with previous selectionsof threshold time periods, i.e., “10 seconds”, “5 minutes”, and “2hours.” In this way, the user may instruct the media guidanceapplication to resume a paused program from the beginning of a sentenceif the media guidance application detects the current program beingpaused for at least 10 seconds and not more than 5 minutes; and resumethe paused program from the beginning of the current speaker's line ifhe or she has been away for at least 5 minutes but not more than 2hours, etc. The media guidance application may also notify the user at asettings page that a selection of a particular time period as athreshold time period would cause the system to resume a pausedon-demand program from an earlier position if the user has paused theprogram for longer than the threshold time period. The media guidanceapplication may receive further user input in the settings page toconfigure other behaviors related to the pause-resume features.

At 1104, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to extract metadata associated with a media asset, the metadataincluding a plurality of positions. Exemplary data structures for themetadata are shown in FIGS. 3 and 4 , and may be transmitted, stored, orpresented in any format and data structure suitable for a particularapplication as described herein. In this embodiment, the metadataassociated with the media asset may include caption text, and the mediaguidance application may analyze the caption text to determine therelative locations of sentences, scenes, and characters' lines in amedia asset. In this embodiment, the metadata associated with the mediaasset includes a field for a current speaker of the media asset and anindication of a start of the current speaker's line. For example, asshown in row 422 of sentence-or-character-level table 420, the metadataassociated with the on-demand program may include a field for a currentspeaker, such as James, as well as an indication of a start of thecurrent speaker's line, such as a starting time stamp for James' line(e.g., “01:00:52”) in a debate scene with Linda. Here, the starting timestamp for James' line refers to the time stamp corresponding to thebeginning of one of James' continuous lines. In the debate scene betweenJames and Linda, as reflected in table 420 of FIG. 4 , which runs from01:00:52 to 01:33:21, James may begin with a first sentence from01:00:52 to 01:01:01 (row 422) and a second sentence from 01:01:01 to01:01:03 (row 424). Linda may respond with a sentence from 01:01:12 to01:01:51 (row 426) followed by a sentence from 01:01:59 to 01:02:21 (row428). In accordance with the embodiments discussed herein, if the mediaguidance application pauses the debate at 01:02:01 (i.e., in the middleof Linda's second sentence during the debate, as shown in row 428), thestarting time stamp of Linda's line would be 01:01:12 (i.e. thebeginning of her first sentence), and the starting time stamp of Linda'ssentence would be 01:01:59.

In this embodiment, the metadata associated with the media assetincludes a field for playback information of a recent scene. Forexample, the metadata associated with the on-demand program may includeplayback information, such as start and stop time stamps, for the debatescene, as shown in row 416 (“Scene 3”) of table 410, in FIG. 4 . In somefurther embodiments, the metadata comprises data on a plurality ofcommercial breaks associated with the media asset. In this embodiment,the plurality of time stamps corresponds to end times of the pluralityof commercial breaks. For example, in some on-demand programs, themetadata associated with a program includes information on commercialbreak data, such as advertisement start and end times shown on rows 12and 14 of FIG. 3 , which may be used as a proxy for scene or chapterhierarchy of the program. The time stamps of the plurality of positionsin the playback hierarchy may correspond to the end times of thecommercial breaks. For example, the end time for commercial break asreflected in row 14 of FIG. 3 (“00:05:31”) may substantially correspondto one of the plurality of positions in the playback hierarchy, such asthe starting time of scene 1 as reflected in row 412 of scene-leveltable 410.

At 1106, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to receive, at a first time, first input from a user to pause the mediaasset at a first position.

At 1108, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to store the first position in a bookmark for the media asset.Continuing from the examples above, the media guidance application maycause control circuitry 704 to respond to an interrupt generated fromuser input device 710, which indicates that the user desires to pausethe program he or she is currently viewing on display 712. In thisembodiment, the media guidance application may submit the pausedposition (e.g., “01:02:01” corresponding to the debate scene) as abookmark to a remote server, such as media content source 816 or mediaguidance data source 818. In some further embodiments, the mediaguidance application running at the remote server may receive the pausedposition and save it in a database as a bookmark. Alternatively, themedia guidance application may simply store the paused position locallyas a bookmark at storage 708. The media guidance application may lateron transmit the paused position to a second device for resumingdisplaying the program there.

At 1110, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to receive, at a second time, second input from the user to resume themedia asset. In this embodiment, the media guidance application runningon user device 700, such as a first user device, may respond to aninterrupt generated from user input interface 710 to resume displayingthe media asset. In some other embodiments, the media guidanceapplication running on a second user device may receive the instructionto resume the media asset, even though the first instruction to pause isreceived by the media guidance application running on the first userdevice. For example, the media guidance application implemented on atelevision may receive the first user input to pause the on-demandprogram, e.g., at the end of James' lines in the above-described debatescene, from a remote control of the television. Subsequently, the mediaguidance application implemented on a cell phone may receive the seconduser input to resume the on-demand program via a touch screen. In suchembodiments, additional features and embodiments as described above areequally applicable. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive the first user input to pause the on-demand program at 01:02:01,in the middle of Linda's second sentence in the debate scene, at thetelevision. Subsequently, the media guidance application may resume theprogram at 01:01:59 (i.e., at the start of the sentence), at 01:01:12(i.e., at the start of Linda's line), or at 01:00:52 (i.e., at the startof the debate scene) from the cell phone in response to receiving theuser's input to resume the program from the cell phone.

At 1112, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to calculate a time period between the first time and the second time.In this embodiment, the time period corresponds to the amount of timethat the media asset is paused for, which also corresponds to the amountof time that the user is away for.

At 1114, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to determine if the time period is greater than the threshold timeperiod as previously configured by the user. As discussed above, themedia guidance application may receive user configurations of one ormore threshold time periods, such as threshold_1, threshold_2, andthreshold_3 of FIG. 4 , each of which having a corresponding playbackpoint to indicate where the user desires to have the media guidanceapplication play back the media asset from when the user is away for anamount of time exceeding the threshold time period. In response todetermining that the time period is greater than the threshold timeperiod, at 1114, the media guidance application may cause controlcircuitry 704 to proceed to 1116 and determine a start of a recentscene. In response to determining that the time period is not greaterthan the threshold, however, the media guidance application may causecontrol circuitry 704 to determine if the first position (i.e., thepause point or paused position “01:02:01” of table 420) corresponds tothe middle of a sentence, at 1124. For example, the media guidanceapplication may keep track of the amount of time that the user haspaused the on-demand program by determining a time period betweenreceiving an input to pause the program (e.g., 7:34:00 AM) and receivinganother input to resume the program (e.g., 7:36:23 AM). The mediaguidance application may then compare the time period (e.g., 00:02:23,or 143 seconds) against a threshold time period (e.g., threshold_2, or 5minutes) to determine whether the time period exceeds the threshold timeperiod. If the media guidance application determines that the thresholdtime period is exceeded, the media guidance application may determine astart of a recent scene and resume the program from there (i.e.,“01:01:12” of the debate scene, as shown in row 426 of table 420), whichis discussed in the preceding example. If, however, the threshold timeperiod is not exceeded, as is the case in the present example, the mediaguidance application may determine if the first position corresponds tothe middle of the paused sentence, and, if so, resume from there (i.e.,“01:01:59” of row 428 in table 420).

At 1116, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to determine the start of the recent scene as a second position based onthe playback hierarchy. In this embodiment, the media guidanceapplication may determine the second position based on the playbackhierarchy as shown in FIG. 3 or FIG. 4 . For example, the media guidanceapplication may identify scene 3 (the “debate scene”) and playbackinformation associated with the scene in row 416 of table 410, as wellas rows 422, 424, 426, and 428 . . . of table 420, to determine thestart of the recent scene, as 01:00:52. In this embodiment, the mediaguidance application may analyze the playback information of the recentscene to determine the start of the recent scene as the second position.

In this embodiment, the media guidance application may set the start ofthe recent scene as the second position of the media asset bydetermining from the playback hierarchy a first time stamp associatedwith the start of the recent scene; determine from the playbackhierarchy a second time stamp associated with an end of the recentscene; compare the first position against the first and second timestamps; and, in response to determining that the first position isbefore the second time stamp and is after the first time stamp,assigning the first time stamp to the second position. For example, themedia guidance application may set the starting time of the recentdebate scene between Linda and James (i.e., “01:00:52”) as a first timestamp and the end time of the debate scene (i.e., “01:33:21”) as asecond time stamp. In response to determining that the first position(i.e., “01:02:01”, where the program is paused) is before the secondtime stamp and temporally after the first time stamp, the media guidanceapplication may assign the first time stamp, “01:00:52”, correspondingto the start of the debate scene, to the second position to be added tothe bookmark.

In this embodiment, the start of the recent scene corresponds to a startof a recent sentence, a start of a recent chapter, a start of a recentepisode, or a start of the media asset. For example, the term “recentscene” may be broadly defined to include not just a theatrical scene,but may refer to a sentence of a media asset, a starting line of acharacter or speaker in the media asset, a scene of a movie, a chapterof a program or movie, an episode of a program series, or the mediaasset itself. Consequently, the start of the recent scene may refer tothe starting time stamp of a sentence, a scene, a chapter, an episode,or a media asset. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive input from the user to pause the on-demand program at the firstposition (“01:02:01”) and, subsequently, receive input from the user toresume the program. Based on receiving the input from the user to resumethe program, the media guidance application may determine that Linda isthe speaker who is currently reciting a line when the input to pause isreceived, and resume the program from the start of Linda's lines(“01:01:12”). In this embodiment, the media guidance application mayidentify the current speaker based on the playback hierarchy. Forexample, the paused first position (“01:02:01”) corresponds to row 428of table 420 in the playback hierarchy of FIG. 4 , based on which themedia guidance application can determine Linda is the speaker.

Continuing from 1114 above, in this embodiment, in response todetermining that the time period is not greater than the threshold timeperiod, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to determine if the first position corresponds to the middle of thesentence, at 1124. In this embodiment, the media guidance applicationmay analyze the metadata to determine that the first position isin-between a start and an end of a recent sentence. For example, themedia guidance application may analyze the metadata contained in table420 to determine that the paused position (at “01:02:01”) is in themiddle of a sentence at row 428, and resume the on-demand program forthe user from the start of the sentence (i.e., “01:01:59”) rather thanfrom the start of the scene (i.e., “01:00:52”).

In this embodiment, the media guidance application may analyze themetadata to determine that the first position is in-between the startand the end of the recent sentence by updating the playback hierarchywith a plurality of additional time stamps and sentences. For example,in order to determine that the paused first position is in-between thestart and end of a recent sentence, the media guidance application mayupdate the playback hierarchy with a plurality of time stampscorresponding to a plurality of sentences in the on-demand program, suchthat the playback hierarchy for the program contains not onlyscene-level time stamps (e.g., table 410), but also sentence-level timestamps and character-level time stamps (e.g., table 420).

Continuing from 1124, if the media guidance application causes controlcircuitry 704 to determine that the first position corresponds to themiddle of the sentence, the media guidance application may determine, at1126, based on the metadata, a second position corresponding to a startof the sentence. For example, once the media guidance applicationdetermines that the first position (“01:02:01”) is in-between the start(“01:01:59”) and end (“01:02:21”) of Linda's second sentence in thedebate scene, the media guidance application may set the time stamp forthe start of the sentence as the second position of the program.

In this embodiment, the media guidance application may even causecontrol circuitry 704 to generate the media asset for display beginningat the first position itself (i.e., the “pause point”), where the mediaasset is paused, if the time period is less than the first threshold.For example, if the time period that the user is away for is not greaterthan the threshold time period of 10 seconds, the media guidanceapplication may resume the program from the first position, i.e., from01:02:01, where it is paused.

At 1130, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to use the second position data derived from 1116 and 1126 and updatethe bookmark to include the second position. The media guidanceapplication may include the second position in addition to, or in lieuof, the first position in the bookmark, either locally or at a remoteserver. For example, the media guidance application may update thebookmark locally to include the second position (start-of-scene“01:00:52” or start-of-sentence “01:01:59”) in addition to the firstposition (“01:02:01”). Alternatively, the media guidance application mayreplace the first position (“01:02:01”) previously stored in thebookmark and update it with the second position.

At 1132, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 704to generate the media asset for display from the bookmark. For example,the media guidance application cause control circuitry 704 to resumegenerating the program for display from the position stored in thebookmark on display 712.

The processes discussed above are intended to be illustrative and notlimiting. One skilled in the art would appreciate that the steps of theprocesses discussed herein may be omitted, modified, combined, and/orrearranged, and any additional steps may be performed without departingfrom the scope of the invention. More generally, the above disclosure ismeant to be exemplary and not limiting. Only the claims that follow aremeant to set bounds as to what the present invention includes.Furthermore, it should be noted that the features and limitationsdescribed in any one embodiment may be applied to any other embodimentherein, and flowcharts or examples relating to one embodiment may becombined with any other embodiment in a suitable manner, done indifferent orders, or done in parallel. In addition, the systems andmethods described herein may be performed in real time. It should alsobe noted that the systems and/or methods described above may be appliedto, or used in accordance with, other systems and/or methods.

1-51. (canceled)
 52. A method comprising: receiving an input to pauseplaying of a media asset; determining, based on natural languageprocessing rules, that the input to pause playing of the media asset wasreceived at a first play position of the media asset that corresponds toa middle of a sentence; identifying, based on the natural languageprocessing rules, a second play position in the media asset thatcorresponds to a start of the sentence; and generating for display,based on receiving an input to resume playing the media asset, the mediaasset from the second play position.
 53. The method of claim 52, whereinthe determining that the input to pause playing of the media asset wasreceived at the first play position of the media asset that correspondsto the middle of the sentence further comprises: determining, based onthe natural language processing rules, a third play position of themedia asset that corresponds to an end of the sentence; and comparingthe first play position against the second play position and the thirdplay position to determine that the first play position is before thethird play position and is after the second play position.
 54. Themethod of claim 52, further comprising extracting metadata associatedwith the media asset, the metadata including a plurality of positions inthe media asset and including caption text, wherein the determining thatthe input to pause playing of the media asset was received at the firstplay position of the media asset that corresponds to the middle of thesentence further comprises: analyzing the caption text to determine thesentence; and applying a grammar rule to the sentence corresponding tothe first play position to determine that the sentence is incomplete.55. The method of claim 54, wherein the metadata associated with themedia asset includes a field for a current speaker of the media assetand an indication of a start of the current speaker's line, and furthercomprising: receiving a second input to pause playing of the media assetat a third play position; determining the current speaker whose line isat the third play position; and generating for display, based onreceiving a second input to resume playing the media asset, the mediaasset from a start of the current speaker's line.
 56. The method ofclaim 54, wherein the metadata associated with the media asset includesa field for playback information of a recent scene, and furthercomprising: receiving a second input to pause playing of the media assetat a third play position; receiving a second input to resume the mediaasset; and analyzing the playback information of the recent scene todetermine a start of the recent scene; and generating for display, basedon receiving a second input to resume playing the media asset, the mediaasset from the start of the recent scene.
 57. The method of claim 56,wherein the start of the recent scene corresponds to a start of a recentchapter, a start of a recent episode, or a start of the media asset. 58.The method of claim 56, further comprising: determining a time periodbetween receiving the second input to pause the media asset andreceiving the second input to resume the media asset; comparing the timeperiod against a threshold time period; generating for display, based onthe time period being greater than the threshold time period, the mediaasset at the start of the recent scene; and generating for display,based on the time period being less than the threshold time period, themedia asset for display from the first play position.
 59. The method ofclaim 58, further comprising: receiving a selection of an option from aplurality of options, wherein each option of the plurality of optionscorresponds to a threshold time period; wherein the threshold timeperiod is based on the selected option.
 60. The method of claim 52,wherein the input to pause playing of the media asset is received via afirst media device and the input to resume the media asset is receivedvia a second media device.
 61. The method of claim 52, furthercomprising: storing the second play position in metadata associated withthe media asset; wherein the generating for display the media asset fromthe second play position includes retrieving the second play positionfrom the metadata.
 62. A system for resuming a media asset comprising:input/output circuitry configured to: receive input to pause playing ofa media asset; and receive input to resume playing of the media asset;and control circuitry configured to: determine, based on naturallanguage processing rules, that an input to pause playing of the mediaasset was received at a first play position of the media asset thatcorresponds to a middle of a sentence; identify, based on the naturallanguage processing rules, a second play position in the media assetthat corresponds to a start of the sentence; and generate for display,based on receiving an input to resume playing the media asset, the mediaasset from the second play position.
 63. The system of claim 62, whereinthe control circuitry determining that the input to pause playing of themedia asset was received at the first play position of the media assetthat corresponds to the middle of the sentence includes: determining,based on the natural language processing rules, a third play position ofthe media asset that corresponds to an end of the sentence; andcomparing the first play position against the second play position andthe third play position to determine that the first play position isbefore the third play position and is after the second play position.64. The system of claim 62, wherein the control circuitry is furtherconfigured to extract metadata associated with the media asset, themetadata includes a plurality of positions in the media asset andincluding caption text, and the control circuitry determining that theinput to pause playing of the media asset was received at the first playposition of the media asset that corresponds to the middle of thesentence includes: analyzing the caption text to determine the sentence;and applying a grammar rule to the sentence corresponding to the firstplay position to determine that the sentence is incomplete.
 65. Thesystem of claim 64, wherein: the metadata associated with the mediaasset includes a field for a current speaker of the media asset and anindication of a start of the current speaker's line; the input/outputcircuitry is further configured to receive a second input to pauseplaying of the media asset at a third play position; and the controlcircuitry is further configured to: determine the current speaker whoseline is at the third play position; and generate for display, based onreceiving a second input to resume playing the media asset, the mediaasset from a start of the current speaker's line.
 66. The system ofclaim 64, wherein: the metadata associated with the media asset includesa field for playback information of a recent scene; and the controlcircuitry is further configured to: determine, based on receiving asecond input to pause playing of the media asset at a third playposition, the recent scene for the third play position; analyze theplayback information of the recent scene to determine a start of therecent scene; and generate for display, based on receiving a secondinput to resume playing of the media asset, the media asset from thestart of the recent scene.
 67. The system of claim 66, wherein the startof the recent scene corresponds to a start of a recent chapter, a startof a recent episode, or a start of the media asset.
 68. The system ofclaim 66, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to:determine a time period between receiving the second input to pause themedia asset and receiving the second input to resume the media asset;compare the time period against a threshold time period; generate fordisplay, based on the time period being greater than the threshold timeperiod, the media asset at the start of the recent scene; and generatefor display, based on the time period being less than the threshold timeperiod, the media asset for display from the first play position. 69.The system of claim 68, wherein: the input/output circuitry is furtherconfigured to receive a selection of an option from a plurality ofoptions; each option of the plurality of options corresponds to athreshold time period; and the threshold time period is based on theselected option.
 70. The system of claim 62, wherein the input to pauseplaying of the media asset is received via a first media device and theinput to resume the media asset is received via a second media device.71. The system of claim 62, wherein: the control circuitry is furtherconfigured to cause storage of the second play position in metadataassociated with the media asset; and the control circuitry generatingfor display the media asset from the second play position includesretrieving the second play position from the metadata.